Saturday 13 March at 14:30 CET is the first round of the Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament in Nice, France.

Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik, Levon Aronian, Alexander Grischuk, Peter Svidler, Boris Gelfand, Vassily Ivanchuk, Vugar Gashimov, Ruslan Ponomariov, Sergey Karjakin, Leinier Dominguez Perez, and Jan Smeets will participate.

This tournament is great for us fans because the organizers make the games and coverage easily accessible.

The format is double round robin with both games between a pair of players occurring on the same day.  On each day, the first two groups of three games are "blindfold" where the players sit with a blank chessboard on laptop computer screens.  Later in the day, in the third and fourth groups of three games the players have boards and pieces.

The Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament does not count for rating purposes.  However, it is a great exhibition of the Grandmasters' blindfold abilities.

www.amberchess2010.com