As Corus is just kicking off, I thought I'd pay a little attention to the Polish Championship, which is winding up. I went to TWIC today to download the games, and then to the official site to check in on the crosstable. I discovered that Mateusz Bartel (2614) has played a great tournament and controls his fate tomorrow. He leads alone by a half point. Only one player can surpass him should he falter, and that's Radoslaw Wojtaszek (2639). Wojtaszek needs to beat...Casper Thunderbird. Yep, right, Casper Thunderbird. Now I'd just downloaded the games, and I think I'd have noticed if there was a Casper Thunderbird among the participants. There wasn't. So I looked for a missing name as between the game scores and the crosstable. There was someone missing: K. Piorun was listed in the games, but he didn't appear on the crosstable. Piorun? Thunderbird? "Piorun kulisty" is Polish and apparently refers to a meterological phenomenon that appears as a "fireball" in the atmosphere, or sometimes it's translated as a "thunderball." Thunderbird? That's as close as I could come to solving the discrepancy. Whatever the name, and Casper Thunderbird is a great one, he's played some good chess in the championship. Below he takes down R. Kempinski (2617) in a Kere's Attack despite being outplayed in the opening after a questionable novelty at move 15.
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