The camera is placed ackwardly - you can't see the whole stage, only one small part of it. The camera is centered on the board where you will be able to watch Kamsky and Topalov play in the next days.
You will be able to follow live stream from the playing hall during the whole game.
Yes, the games should not be transmited without permission of the organisers. The games were transmited on playchess.com (owned by ChessBase) anyway. On the official site it was written in red that ChessBase is illegaly transmiting the moves from the official site to playchess.com.
Topalov outprepared Kamsky and by move 10 already had a full hour advantage on the clock. Kamsky held the equilibrium but used up his remaining time quickly. Once he found himself with very few time (and still plenty of moves to play) his position quickly deteriorated. While Topalov still had almost an hour on his clock, Kamsky was down to few seconds. Had he not resigned, he would probably lose on time anyway.
It looks like they started to use English at the press conference after the first game. However the sound is quite bad so it is hard to understand anything and the players (specially Kamsky) don't feel to talk all that much. Press conferences at Anand vs. Kramnik match were far more professional and interesting.
Kamsky steered the game into his theritory and came out of the opening with a steady advantage. After a long gruelling battle Kamsky converts his advantage into a win to tie the match at 2-2.
Tommorow is a rest day and then Kamsky has the white pieces again.
For some reason the colours were not reversed at half time, so Topalov is playing white. The regulations on the official site, still say that the colours should be reversed after game 4 (see 3.4.1)
Maybe we will see an appeal from one side or the other after the match is over
Also playchess.com announced that it is not covering the game today. Probably legal actions against ChessBase were taken by the organizers.
Here is a link to watch the match live : mmsh://chess.evolink.net:8181/chess?MSWMExt=.asf Use it with VLC for instance. You unfortunately don't see the chess board. I noticed Topalov is bending over the chessboard very closely, maybe he is short sighted. You see him drinking a glass of water, not very exciting though.
This is out of topic but I could not connect to FICS today.
Topalov wins to earn a World Championship match against Anand which is to be played by end of 2009.
You have to feel sorry for Kamsky. By move 30 he had a completely winning position but once again found himself in severe time pressure. With only seconds to spare for his moves he blundered and handed Topalov the win, and match. After he made the time control, he just shook his head. He needed 5 minutes to get a grip on himself, before he started to look at the board and think about the position (which was hopelessly lost) again. After coming to peace with himself and blitzing out some more moves, Kamsky resigned.
