Botvinnik Memorial Rapid

As part of the continuing celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mikhail Botvinnik (pictured), there is a rapid double round-robin competition taking place in Moscow from 2-3 September.

The four players are none other than the current top four ranked players in the world!  Magnus Carlsen, Vishy Anand, Lev Aronian and Vladimir Kramnik.

The time control is 25 minutes plus 10 second increment, and the games start at 15:00 local time (11:00 UTC).  A novel idea will mean that the clocks are stopped half way through the game and the players will discuss their thoughts about the game with the audience (while the other player wears headphones, so they can't hear!).

Live video coverage of the competition is available here (currently replaying the first day's games), via the official website (in Russian).

A separate women's competition in the same format takes place concurrently with the men's event.

On the first day of competition, there was only one decisive game among the men, and only one indecisive game among the women!

The standings after the first day:

Aronian ponders his move against Carlsen (screenshot from the live coverage)

Anand talks about the game while Kramnik dons headphones

And now it's Kramnik's turn on the microphone!

The women's standings: