NH Tournament in The Netherlands

The 2009 NH 'Rising Stars v Experience' Tournament in the Netherlands runs from 21-30 August.  This event will pit a team of young talents against a team of more experienced players.

It's an interesting idea for a team tournament, but last year the organisers got the balance of team strengths badly wrong, and the Rising Stars destroyed the Experience team by a crushing 33.5-16.5 score.

This year looks like being a much closer competition, with the Experience team being boosted by the inclusion of Peter Svidler, rated 2726 Elo (pictured).  Indeed, the only survivor from last year's Experience team is Ljubomir Ljubojevic.

The Rising Stars team is headed by US Champion Hikaru Nakmura, and also features a woman player in the form of 15 year-old Hou Yifan, who narrowly lost to Alexandra Kosteniuk in the final of last year's Women's World Chess Championship.

Fabiano Caruana is the only member of the Rising Stars team who played in this event last year.  His last-round win against Simen Agdestein is shown below.

The event is organised by NH Hoteles and the Association Max Euwe, and the official website with more details can be found here.

The full team line-ups are: