Essent starts again
It's that period of the year: leaves are falling down and although we still see the sun quite often, it's getting slightly colder. Especially in Hoogeveen. It's mid-October and this means Essent time! Today it's the start of the 11th edition of the tournament where the players play with chess sets of glass. Well, the four players in the traditional round-robin will. This year they are Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine), last year's winner Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbeidzan), the highest-rated Dutchman Loek van Wely and World Junior Champion Zaven Andriasyan (Armenia). With an average rating of 2668 (category 17) the tournament promises to bring some interesting fights.From the press release:Former world junior champion Mamedyarov, currently the no. 7 on the FIDE rating list, is the big favourite. Mamedyarov won the Essent Tournament in 2006, before Judit Polgar and Veselin Topalov.The traditional criteria for selecting the Essent round-robin (strongest Dutch player, world juniors champion, best female and world champion) have almsot been kept intact. Only Judit Polgar had to refuse this year because of other obligations. The dates of the 11th Essent Chess Tournament are Friday 12 October - Saturday 20 October 2007. As always, the venue is the City Hall of the municipality of Hoogeveen. Besides the four-player round-robin, a strong open tournament (with more than ten GM's playing) and two amateur tournaments will be held. A total of more than 200 chess players are participating in the Essent Chess Tournament.Last year the Essent Toernooi was the first big tournament where we did video reports for this website. The post-mortem Polgar-Mamedyarov has become infamous by now. We did photo reports here and here and here and here and I had an interview with the young Dutch GMs l'Ami, Smeets and Werle.This year I won't play myself but I'll surely visit the tournament for new video reports!Participants Essent 2007:
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| Shakhryar Mamedyarov (2757) | Ruslan Ponomariov (2722) |
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| Loek van Wely (2679) | Zaven Andriasyan (2540) |
The first forty participants of the Essent Open:[TABLE=20](Full list here.) Last year three IM norms were scored in this group. The Mamedyarova are joining their again and among the other regular guests we see Vlastimil Hort. It's going to be another great tournament!
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.”
Peter's first book The Chess Revolution is out now!
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