Amber Rapid & Blindfold Preview
The 20th, and final, Amber tournament starts on Friday 11th March, with the first games taking place on Saturday.
The tournament is certainly going out with a huge bang, having the top EIGHT ranked players in the world in the 12-strong field.
The venue is Monaco once again, and the format is the familiar (and unique) separate rapid and blindfold round-robin events, which are combined to give an overall tournament score.
The line up for the final Amber:
| Rank | Name | Nat | Elo |
| 1 | Anand, Viswanathan | IND | 2817 |
| 2 | Carlsen, Magnus | NOR | 2815 |
| 3 | Aronian, Levon | ARM | 2808 |
| 4 | Kramnik, Vladimir | RUS | 2785 |
| 5 | Ivanchuk, Vassily | UKR | 2779 |
| 6 | Karjakin, Sergey | RUS | 2776 |
| 7 | Topalov, Veselin | BUL | 2775 |
| 8 | Nakamura, Hikaru | USA | 2774 |
| 10 | Grischuk, Alexander | RUS | 2747 |
| 11 | Gashimov, Vugar | AZE | 2746 |
| 16 | Gelfand, Boris | ISR | 2733 |
| 43 | Giri, Anish | NED | 2690 |
With an average rating of 2770 Elo, this is truly one of the strongest events in history! The total prize fund is €227,000 (around $315,000).
It's nice to see arch-enemies Kramnik and Topalov in the same event for the first time in far too long. Let's hope they can put their past quarrels behind them and help give Amber a fitting farewell. Who knows, they might even shake hands at the start and end of their games! Go on, guys. Bury the hatchet. It's what Amber would want!
It will also be very interesting to see how Hikaru Nakamura fares in the competition. His skill at rapid chess is well known, but his abilities at blindfold are untested.
The very first Amber tournament was won by Vassily Ivanchuk, and he has also taken part every year since. So it is fitting that the great Ukrainian is back yet again for the final tournament. Indeed, Ivanchuk was the joint winner of last year's event with Magnus Carlsen.
Chucky beating Magnus in their blindfold game at last year's Amber tournament
The full schedule is below. The drawing of lots to determine the exact pairings is on Friday.
| Sat 12 March | 14.30 hrs - Round 1 |
| Sun 13 March | 14.30 hrs - Round 2 |
| Mon 14 March | 14.30 hrs - Round 3 |
| Tue 15 March | 14.30 hrs - Round 4 |
| Wed 16 March | Free Day |
| Thu 17 March | 14.30 hrs - Round 5 |
| Fri 18 March | 14.30 hrs - Round 6 |
| Sat 19 March | 14.30 hrs - Round 7 |
| Sun 20 March | 14.30 hrs - Round 8 |
| Mon 21 March | Free Day |
| Tue 22 March | 14.30 hrs - Round 9 |
| Wed 23 March | 14.30 hrs - Round 10 |
| Thu 24 March | 12.30 hrs - Round 11 |
Each day there are four sessions of play: two blindfold sessions followed by two rapid sessions. The rapid games are played at 25 minutes plus 10 seconds per move, while blindfold games are 25 minutes plus 20 seconds per move.
The 14:30 start time of the first session translates to 13:30 GMT (or 08:30 Eastern in the US).
The official website is here.
Who do YOU think will win the last ever Amber tournament?
