First FIDE Grand Prix tournament
The first FIDE Grand Prix tournament takes place from 20 April to 6 May in Baku, Azerbaijan. The structure of the qualifying has become a little complicated, to put it mildly, so a recap of the purpose of this event might be in order:
This is FIDE's attempt at a new qualifying structure to determine a challenger for the World Chess Champion. It's the first of a series of tournaments during 2008 and 2009 - a Grand Prix - to find a challenger for the World Chess Championship in 2010. There are 6 events in the Grand Prix and 21 participants, who will only play in 4 events each, so that each individual event will have 14 competitors.
The other events of the Grand Prix are:
- Sochi, Russia - 30 July to 15th August 2008
- Doha, Qatar - 13 to 29th December 2008
- Montreux, Switzerland - 14th to 30th April 2009
- Elista, Russia - 8th to 24th August 2009
- Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic - 7th to 23rd December 2009
The player with the best overall score from the Grand Prix will play the winner of the 2009 Chess World Cup and the winner of that match will then challenge the Champion for the title.
Who will this Champion be? Well, later this year Vishy Anand and Vladimir Kramnik play for the World Chess Championship. Shortly after that a match between Veselin Topalov and Gata Kamsky should take place and the winner of that gets the right to play the Champion (either Anand or Kramnik) for the title sometime in 2009. The winner of that match will be challenged by the winner of the match between the winner of the Grand Prix and the winner of the 2009 World Cup. Phew!
If you have any queries on the above please send them on a postcard to Kirsan Ilyumzhinov c/o Chess City, Kalmykia. 
Anyway, the players in the first event in Baku are:
Magnus Carlsen (NOR 2765)
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (AZE 2752)
Teimour Radjabov (AZE 2751)
Peter Svidler (RUS 2746)
Sergey Karjakin (UKR 2732)
Michael Adams (ENG 2729)
Gata Kamsky (USA 2726)
Alexander Grischuk (RUS 2716)
Etienne Bacrot (FRA 2705)
Ivan Cheparinov (BUL 2696)
Wang Yue (CHN 2689)
Ernesto Inarkiev (RUS 2684)
Vugar Gashimov (AZE 2679)
David Navara (CZE 2672)
and the website for the event is here.
