Kamsky Topalov Game Two is Today - Where are You Watching?

After Topalov's Novelty 17.e5, Kamsky replies 17...Bd7!

Image captured from Chessgames.com coverage

Kamsky garnered half a point as Black yesterday when he found a pretty refutation of Topa's move 17 novelty in the Grünfeld Defense in the World Chess Challenge Sofia 2009. I watched the game at Chessgames.com with commentary by GM Nigel Short.

In the past I have usually watched relays of events at Internet Chess Club (ICC) but I let my membership lapse. On ICC I was FortyShorty for a while. In 2007 I changed user names to sdo1.

The experience was much less intense at Chessgames.com and I missed the audio that Chess.FM usually has paired with the ICC atmosphere. The game starts in about an hour and I may just go ahead and re-up at ICC for the remainder of this match.

Or perhaps I'll go check out the controversy at Playchess! From ChessVibes:

Many of you who were following the game live today may have wondered about the following. From the start, below the famous, blue DGT game viewer there was a remarkable legal note:

Warning! It is absolutely prohibited the live broadcast of the moves or video during the game on other websites, media or software without the explicit permission of the orginizers [sic] of the match.

When the game was running for about half an hour, another, interesting line was added:

Currently the broadcast rights are being violated by ChessBase on its software PlayChess.

Since many other sources were covering the game live, including TWIC, Chessdom and ICC, we’re clearly dealing with some private war between the Bulgarians on one side and Chessbase on the other. It’s well-known that their relationship hasn’t exactly been “deeply in love” for quite a while now, but to bring it into the open like the official site was doing today is, well, remarkable, let’s put it that way.

Where are you watching?

[UPDATE] I went ahead and reupped at ICC. What can I say? I need to hear Mig Greengard and his band of commenting GMs... Today is GM Nick de Firmian of MCO fame. I'm sdo1 again, give me a yell.