And now for... many more top events

With the FIDE Grand Prix in Nalchik less than a week behind us, it seems to be a pretty quiet period for top chess. However, many very strong events will be held this month: the President's Cup (Azerbaijan vs Rest of the World, with Anand and Kramnik playing!), the US Championship (with both Kamsky and Nakamura!), the 3rd ACP World Rapid Cup and, of course, the MTel Masters.

Last year the President's Cup was a strong open in Baku, held directly after the 1st FIDE Grand Prix. This year a completely different event is organized to honour national leader Heydar Aliyev. The 2009 President's Cup, from May 7th to 9th, is a rapid match (Scheveningen system) between the strongest players of Azerbaijan (Teimour Radjabov, Vugar Gashimov, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Gadir Huseynov and Rauf Mamedov) against a Rest of the World team (for this event dully named "FIDE World") with World Champion Viswanathan Anand, former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik, 2007 World Cup runner-up Alexei Shirov and 2009 Corus winner Sergey Karjakin. That's 5 against 4, so apparently Azerbaijan will shuffle with a few players.

May 7-17th are the dates for one of the strongest U.S. Chess Championships ever, which will be held at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis. The tournament will be a 9-round event with 24 participants, using the Swiss system with one round per day and a rest day between rounds 5 and 6. Kamsky, Nakamura, Onischuk, Shulman, Christiansen, Becerra, Akobian, Kaidanov, Benjamin, Ehlvest, Gulko, Ibragimov, Khachiyan, Shabalov, Friedel, Hess, Robson, Sevillano, Zatonskih, Krush, Shankland, Brooks, Lawton and Hughes play - biographies here.

For the fifth time Sofia will be hosting the international super chess tournament M-Tel Masters, from May 12th to May 23rd. As alway, it's a six-player double round-robin with this year Carlsen, Dominguez, Ivanchuk, Shirov, Topalov and Wang Yue playing in a glass pavilion on the square in front of the National Theatre Ivan Vazov. M-Tel Masters is part of the international chain of chess tournaments Grand Slam that also includes Corus in Wijk an Zee, Linares and Nanjing. The winner in Sofia wins the right to take part in the Final Masters Grand Slam tournament that will take place in Bilbao, Spain later this year.

The 3rd ACP World Rapid Cup will take place in Odessa, Ukraine from May 22nd to 24th. As usual, it will be a KO tournament with 16 participants. In accordance with the ACP rules, 13 of 16 spots are given to the players who qualified from the ACP Tour 2007/08. Viktor Korchnoi has been invited as a commentator for the spectators. As of April 22nd the following 11 grandmasters had already confirmed their participation: Jakovenko, Grischuk, Movsesian, Gashimov, Bacrot, Naiditsch, Eljanov, Efimenko, Najer, Tregubov and Drozdovskij.