Morning everyone!

   For those of you who might not know right now, there is a pretty major tournament going on in Italy right now called the Tornei di Capodanno, with some pretty big name players. It's a 10 player/9 RR event from 12/28/10 to 1/6/11. It's a category 18 event with an average Elo of 2695.

   Time mode: 90 minutes/40 moves + 30 minutes + 30 seconds/move starting with the 1st move

   Game start: 15:00, last round at 12:00

   The field is as follows:

Vassily Ivanchuk - 2764 Elo UKR

Sergei Movsesian - 2721 SVK         

David Navara - 2708 CZE

Vugar Gashimov - 2733 AZE

Alexander Morozevich - 2700 RUS

Fabiano Caruana - 2709 ITA

Francisco Vallejo Pons - 2898 ESP

Nigel Short - 2680 ENG

Alexander Onischuk - 2683 USA

Michele Godena - 2549 ITA

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   Nigel Short looks for some redemption after his horrendous showing at the 2010 London Chess Classic (pull PGN from that event available in the Downloads/Database of Games section by me  )

   Here are the first round games as they were played yesterday:

The first game up is Short/Gashimov in a Sicilian Najdorf, and after a 55 move game, Gashimov resigned:

 

 

   Next up is the game involving 2010 Chess Olympiad hero Vassily Ivanchuk, who helped bring home Olympic gold for the Ukraine. He was black against Caruana in a Dutch Defence.

 

   Next up is Vallejo Pons/Godena in the second shortest match of the day at 35 moves with an Evans Gambit opening.

 

  Finally, we have Alexander Onischuk against Movsesian. He plays as White against Movsesian in a Nimzo-Indian Rubenstein.

 

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   I'm not going to be doing standings until more than halfway through the event. As always, when the event is complete, I'll be adding the PGN to the Database of Games section, like I have done for the past several tournaments.

  -Mark

thanks, i didn't know of this tourney.

that last move by Godena looks very awful, I'm not sure he really did it

 Original post edited. Thanks for the correction pdela! 

   -Mark