Bilbao: chess outside, in a glass cube
The Grand Slam Final, scheduled for September 1-13 in Bilbao, Spain will embroider on the theme of the M-Tel Masters: the players will make their moves in a glass cube, placed somewhere in the city centre.Thanks to a press release, the official name of the tournament became known today: I Grand Slam Final Chess Masters Bilbao. The impressive prize fund will be distributed as follows: 1st 150,000 Eur, 2nd 70,000 Eur, 3rd 60,000 Eur, 4th 50,000 Eur, 5th 40,000 Eur and 6th 30,000 Eur. And as we had been speculating about last week, the special feature of the tournament is indeed a glass cube:The games will be played inside a glass cube at the city centre of Bilbao. The glass cube will be absolutely soundproofed and air-conditioned.The big advantage of the "aquarium" in Sofia was the possibility to have the audience sitting just a few metres away from the players, without having to whisper. They could even leave their mobile phones swiched on! Besides that, this audience was treated with daily commentary by titled players, among them Boris Spassky, as you may recall. In Bilbao, the commentary will be provided by Leontxo Garcia together with Susan Polgar, also right next to the cube.But the big difference between Bilbao and Sofia is of course the location of the cube: in September, the players will be playing their games outside, visible for everyone on their way to work or walking their dog. At the end of the M-Tel Masters, Silvio Danailov had mentioned a similar idea as a possibily for next year's event, but the Spaniards will have the world premier.Last week the definite field of participants was already confirmed by the organizers:
The Bilbao 2008 participants: Aronian, Anand, Ivanchuk, Carlsen, Topalov and Radjabov
Here's a Bilbao promo video:
Previous reports on the Grand Slam:
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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