Dates & venues Grand Prix announced

FIDE has announced the dates and venues for the 2008/2009 Grand Prix Tournaments: Baku, Krasnoyarsk, Doha, Montreux, Elista and Karlovy Vary.


Here's the schedule for the first Grand Prix Series:

When	Where
April 20th ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú May 6th 2008	Baku, Azerbaijan
July 30th ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú August 15th 2008	Krasnoyarsk (or other Russian city), Russia
December 13th ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú 29th 2008	Doha, Qatar
April 14th ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú 28th, 2009	Montreux, Switzerland
August 1st ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú 17th, 2009	Elista, Russia
December 7th ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú 23rd, 2009	Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic

Reserve cities are Istanbul and Teheran.

Each tournament will be a 14-player all play all. The winner of the Grand Prix will play with the winner of the 2009 World Cup for the right to challenge the World Champion in 2010.

A PDF of the specific Grand Prix rules, set up by FIDE and Global Chess BV, can be downloaded here. The qualification criteria were already mentioned in our previous article on the Grand Prix. It made clear that Anand, Kramnik, Topalov, Kamsky, Shirov, Carlsen, Karjakin, Ivanchuk, Mamedyarov, Leko, Morozevich, Aronian, Radjabov and Gelfand have qualified (1st reserve Adams, 2nd Svidler, 3rd Polgar, 4th Grischuk).

Some interesting details:

• The original idea FIDE had, was to organise at least one Grand Prix Tournament on every continent. In this, (so far) they haven't succeeded.
• The players are expected to cooperate reasonably with the media, and they are required to make themselves available for short interviews immediately after each game. ChessVibes says: excellent!
• At the Grand Prix tournaments, the "Sofia Rule" will be applied: players will not be allowed to offer draws directly to their opponents.
• The "handshake rule" at the GP tournaments is still quite unclear: "The players shall shake hands (or shall greet each other in a normal social manner in accordance with the conventional rules of their society) before the start and after the end of each game. If a player fails to meet these requirements and after being asked to do so by the Chief Arbiter, then he will lose the game immediately."
• The recommended prize money which will be offered by host city organisers for each tournament is 212,000 Euros and is split 162,000 Euros as direct prize money for the tournament and 50,000 Euros towards an accumulated prize fund for the players at the end of the series.
• How the overall winner is decided? He will be the one who will score the most number of cumulative points. The cumulative score will be calculated from the best three results for each player.

Place 	  EUR 	     Points
  1 	30,000 	  140 + 40 bonus
  2 	22,500 	    130 + 20
  3 	20,000 	    120 + 10
  4 	15,000 	       110
  5 	12,500 	       100
  6 	11,000 	        90
  7 	10,000 	        80
  8 	 8,500 	        70
  9 	 7,500 	        60
 10 	 6,000 	        50
 11 	 5,500 	        40
 12 	 5,000 	        30
 13 	 4,500 	        20
 14 	 4,000 	        10

At the end of the series, the following prizes will be awarded:

Overall Place  	Accumulated Prize (Euros)
    1st               75,000
    2nd               50,000
    3rd               40,000
    4th               30,000
    5th               25,000
    6th               20,000
    7th               18,000
    8th               16,000
    9th               14,000
   10th               12,000

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Related items:

• "Qualification criteria Grand Prix published"
• Results of the Executive Board Meeting at the 78th FIDE Congress
• Head office Global Chess at the Max Euwe Center - interview with Bessel Kok