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Caruana, Nakamura To Play Chess.com Isle of Man International

Caruana, Nakamura To Play Chess.com Isle of Man International

PeterDoggers
| 14 | Chess Event Coverage

The Chess.com Isle of Man International Masters is shaping up to become one of the strongest open tournaments of the year. This week, the top two American GMs Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura have signed up.

Caruana and Nakamura, who finished playing the Sinquefield Cup on Sunday, are the new top seed. The Isle of Man International Masters will be held October 1-9 on the island between England and Northern Ireland. The two players are currently numbers three and six respectively in the live ratings.

"I am delighted about the presence of these two American elite players," said Isle of Man International Chess Committee Chairman Alan Ormsby. "This will help make the event one of the strongest opens to be held in the world this year."

The tournament now has six players rated above 2700, the others are GMs Pavel Eljanov (Ukraine, 2737), Michael Adams (England, 2727), Wang Hao (China, 2712) and Peter Leko (Hungary, 2709). Adams recently won the British Championship with a superb score of 10.0/11. Leko was a world championship contender in 2004, when he tied a match with Vladimir Kramnik 7-7.

The tournament will be held in the Villa Marina. | Photo courtesy Fiona Steil-Antoni.

"I am excited to see the top players in the world joining the Chess.com Isle of Man tournament," said Chess.com CEO Erik Allebest. "I love the players, the location, and the format. It’s going to be amazing."

Our site will also be involved in the production of the live broadcast, with commentary by GM Simon Williams and WIM Fiona Steil-Antoni. Staff members Peter Doggers and FM Mike Klein will be present as well.

IM Danny Rensch, Vice President of Content and Professional Relations of this site, said about the news:

"Can you say 'strongest open tournament of the year' five times fast? Having long discussed how great it would be to organize our own "over the board" Chess.com tournament, but always lacking the resources, we could not be more excited that we're now holding one of the best open events of 2016 without having to do any of the leg work (thanks Alan!). What Alan and the sponsors have been able to do (bringing in both Hikaru and Fabiano) has completely surpassed our expectations, and we applaud their efforts!"

A view of the tiny "Calf of Man" island, which has four lighthouses but only two residents!  | Photo: Wikipedia.

For this third edition, Chess.com has taken on the role as host and sponsor of the even from Pokerstars. Chess.com is joined in this role by the Scheinberg family; the Isle of Man Department of Economic Development also assists.

The prize fund of the tournament is £50,000, £12,000 going to first place (about €14,000 / $15,785 USD). Like at the Gibraltar Chess Festival, another very strong British open, there will also be sizable women's prizes, totaling £9,500 with £3,500 for allocated for first.

2016 Isle Of Man | Participants Mid-August (Top 30)

# FED Title Name Rating
1 GM Fabiano Caruana 2807
2 GM Hikaru Nakamura 2791
3 GM Pavel Eljanov 2737
4 GM Michael Adams 2727
5 GM Wang Hao 2712
6 GM Peter Leko 2709
7 GM Maxim Rodshtein 2698
8 GM Arkadij Naiditsch 2696
9 GM Eltaj Safarli 2678
10 GM Laurent Fressinet 2677
11 GM Alexei Shirov 2674
12 GM Julio Granda Zuniga 2672
13 GM Gabriel Sargissian 2670
14 GM Gujarathi Vidit 2669
15 GM Sergei Movsesian 2666
16 GM David Howell 2663
17 GM Hou Yifan 2658
18 GM Georg Meier 2657
19 GM Axel Bachmann 2656
20 GM Nils Grandelius 2643
21 GM Hrant Melkumyan 2640
22 GM Abhijeet Gupta 2630
23 GM Aleksandr Lenderman 2621
24 GM Benjamin Bok 2613
25 GM Erwin L'Ami 2606
26 GM Jorden van Foreest 2601
27 GM Alexander Donchenko 2581
28 IM Benjamin Gledura 2581
29 GM Mihail Marin 2576
30 GM Sabino Brunello 2570

(Full list here.)

PeterDoggers
Peter Doggers

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.”

In October, Peter's first book The Chess Revolution will be published!


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