New top events (and the ones we'll visit)

Now that the Candidates Matches in Kazan are over, it's time to look ahead and see what the future brings in top chess! We give information about the most important events in June and July: the Anand-Shirov match in León, the Sigeman tournament in Malmö, the Kings Tournament in Bazna/Medias, the Biel Chess Festival and the Sparkassen Chess Meeting in Dortmund.

June 2-6: Anand vs Shirov in León

The traditional chess festival in León, Spain will take place June 2-6. Instead of a knock-out with four players, this time Viswanathan Anand and Alexei Shirov will play six games (Friday to Sunday, two per day) with 45 minutes plus 30 seconds increment per move.

Venue is the León Auditorium, where GM Miguel Illescas and IM Michael Rahal will give live commentary, and the Castilla and León TV has scheduled a special coverage, including live broadcasting of some games. As always, there will be many side activities, such as simuls by Shirov, a lecture by Illescas on the Kasparov-Deep Blue historic match, another lecture class for the local young talents by the IM Sergio Estremera, a chess cinema week and the traditional Young Talents tournament.

ChessVibes will be in León to provide on-the-spot coverage.

June 9-13: Sigeman Tournament in Malmö

Like last year, the 19th Sigeman tournament is a six-player, single round robin. Last year's winner Anish Giri will be back to defend his title against Alexei Shirov, Wesley So, Jonny Hector, Nils Grandelius and Hans Tikkanen. The tournament will take place at the classical Hipp Theater in central Malmö, Sweden for the fourteenth time.

ChessVibes will be in Malmö to provide on-the-spot coverage.

June 11-22: Kings Tournament in Bazna/Medias

After the Tata Steel tournament in Wijk aan Zee in January this year, the second Grand Slam event will be held in Bazna/Medias, Romania. Again, the Kings Tournament is a six-player, double round robin and this year the players are Magnus Carlsen, Vassily Ivanchuk, Sergei Karjakin, Hikaru Nakamura, Teimour Radjabov and Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu.

The tournament will provide videos with Amber-style post-mortems with the players, in cooperation with Macauley Peterson and ChessVibes.

July 16-29: Biel Chess Festival

Like the Kings Tournament, the Biel Chess Festival's top group is a six-player, double round robin. Magnus Carlsen, Vugar Gashimov, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Fabiano Caruana, Alexander Morozevich and Yannick Pelletier will play in Switzerland.

Biel will see the football score (3 points for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loss) and there will be a live commentary show with the players every round, which can be followed at the official website.

There's a good chance ChessVibes will be visiting Biel.

July 21-31: Sparkassen Chess Meeting, Dortmund

Yes, the 39th Sparkassen Chess Meeting will also be a six-player, double round robin. Vladimir Kramnik, Ruslan Ponomariov, Hikaru Nakamura, Anish Giri, Le Quang Liem and Georg Meier will play in the city theater of Dortmund, Germany.

For the second time Dortmund uses a draw ban: the grandmasters are not allowed to offer a draw during the game. The game will be declared a draw when a win for either side is not possible anymore, or in case of a three-fold repetition.

Traditionally the drawing of lots for the Dortmund tournament always takes place months in advance. It was done on April 7th and you can find the complete schedule here.

There's a good chance ChessVibes will be visiting Dortmund.

Summer open tournaments

Traditionally there will be many big open tournaments in June and July. To name a few: the Paris Open, the Albena 2011 tournament, the Leiden Chess Tournament, the Benasque Open, the Science Park Amsterdam Chess Tournament, the Ikaros Tourmament (where ChessVibes will be!), the Czech Open and the Andorra Open. Please contact us if you think we forgot to mention an important chess event in our calendar!