Coming up: Tal Memorial & NH Chess Tournament

The 2nd Grand Prix tournament hasn't finished yet, but still we think it's good to warm up the chess fans a bit already for what will be happing next week. In Moscow, 18-30 August, there's the Tal Memorial, and in Amsterdam, 20-30 August, the NH Chess Tournament.

The traditional chess festival M. Tal Memorial will take place in Moscow (GUM, Exhibition Hall- very close to Red Square) from 17 August (arrival date) to 31 August (departure date).

It will consist of two parts: a classical chess round robin tournament of ten top GMs, viz. Vladimir Kramnik, Alexander Morozevich, Evgeny Alekseev, Vassily Ivanchuk, Alexei Shirov, Gata Kamsky, Ruslan Ponomariov, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Peter Leko and Boris Gelfand, and the Tal Cup Blitz tournament (qualification August 27 and 28, final August 29 and 30).

The classical tournament will be played with the FIDE time control, i.e. 2 hours for the first 40 moves, 1 hour for the next 20 moves and another 15 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move starting with move 61. The first round will be played on 18 Aug, the last round - 27 Aug, the rest day - 23 Aug. Each round starts at 3 p.m.

St Basil's and Spasskaya Tower, Red Square | ?Ǭ© Dmitry Azovtsev


The prize fund of each part of the Tal Memorial amounts to $100,000, i.e. $200,000 for the whole event. The exact distribution of prizes will be the same as in the previous year.

Prize distribution (classical supertournament): 1st place = US $30,000; 2nd place = US $20,000; 3rd place = US $15,000; 4th place = US $10,000; 5th place = US $8,000; 6th place = US $6,000; 7th place = US $4,000; 8th place = US $3,000; 9th place = US $2,500; 10th place = US $ 1,500

Prize distribution (blitz supertournament): 1st place = US $25,000; 2nd place = US $15,000; 3rd place = US $10,000; 4th place = US $7,250; 5th place = US $6,250; 6th place = US $5,500; 7th place = US $4,500; 8th place = US $4,000; 9th place = US $3,500; 10th place = US $3,000; 11th to 14th places = 4 x $2,500 US; 15th to 18th places = 4 x $1.500 US. More information will be available at the website of the Russian Chess Federation.

The third NH Chess Tournament will be held in Amsterdam from August 20 to 30, 2008. The venue of this clash between 'Rising Stars' and 'Experience' is the NH Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky in the centre of the Dutch capital.

The Experience team consists of Evgeny Bareev (Russia, 2655), Viktor Korchnoi (Switzerland, 2602), Artur Jussupow (Germany, 2587), Simen Agdestein (Norway, 2583) and Ljubomir Ljubojevic (Serbia, 2555).

The Rising Stars team consists of Wang Yue (China, 2704), Ivan Cheparinov (Bulgaria, 2687), Fabiano Caruana (Italy, 2630), Daniel Stellwagen (The Netherlands, 2616) and Erwin L'Ami (The Netherlands, 2610).

Hotel Krasnapolsky is located at the famous Dam Square in the heart of Amsterdam


They play a 'Scheveningen' tournament, which means that each player of one team plays against each of the players of the other team. They do so twice, once with the white pieces and once with the black pieces. Members of the Rising Stars team may be most interested in the special prize available to them - the player with the highest score gets an invitation to the prestigious 2009 Amber Rapid and Blindfold tournament in Nice.

The rounds start at 13.30 (except for the last round on August 30, which starts at noon; August 25 is a free day) and every day there is expert commentary for the public. Admission is free. You can find more information at the tournament website: www.nhchess.com.