Pairings Tal Memorial
Mamedyarov-Nakamura, Karjakin-Gelfand, Shirov-Wang Hao, Aronian-Kramnik and Grischuk-Eljanov - these are the pairings for the first round of the Tal Memorial which starts tomorrow. This was the result of the drawing of lots that took place during tonight's opening ceremony at the Ritz/Carlton Hotel in Moscow. ChessVibes is in the Russian capital and will bring on-the-spot coverage of the Tal Memorial and the World Blitz.The traditional Tal Memorial tournament will be held 4-14 November in the GUM Exhibition Hall on Red Square, Moscow. Levon Aronian (ARM, 2801), Vladimir Kramnik (RUS, 2791), Alexander Grischuk (RUS 2771), Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (AZE, 2763), Sergey Karjakin (RUS, 2760), Pavel Eljanov (UKR, 2742), Boris Gelfand (ISR, 2741), Hikaru Nakamura (USA, 2741), Alexei Shirov (ESP, 2735) and Wang Hao (CHN, 2727) play. Live here and here's a live video stream with commentary in Russian.The average rating of the tournament is 2757 which comes down to a category 21 tournament. It's a 10-player single round-robin one rest day, on November 9th. The rate of play is 100 minutes for the first 40 moves, then 50 minutes for the subsequent 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game, with an increment of 30 seconds per move, starting from move one.There are special rules at this tournament about arriving late and drawing games. If the player is less than an hour late for the game, he is fined in amount of 500 Euros. (Naturally if he arrives late more than an hour he loses.) Draw offers and agreements are forbidden at the tournament. Draws can occur after a three-fold repetition, the 50-move rule or in a position where mate is not possible anymore.The prize fund amounts to 100,000 Euros, and is distributed as follows (amounts in Euros):| 1th 30,000 2th 20,000 3th 15,000 4th 10,000 5th 8,000 | 6th 6,000 7th 4,000 8th 3,000 9th 2,500 10th 1,500 |
After the Tal Memorial the traditional World Blitz Championship will be held from November 16 till 18.
The Ploschad Revoluytsii metro station, close to Red Square
The Ritz/Carlton hotel, just north of Red Sqaure. It's where the players are staying and where yesterday the openin ceremony was held
Some quick interviews for Russian TV before the ceremony, e.g. with Gelfand...
...and Shirov, who will play his seventh tournament in a row
We saw many familiar faces, like Mark Dvoretsky...
..Mark Glukhovsky (editor of 64 magazine)...
...and Genna Sosonko
The opening ceremony with in the yellow jacket the presentation by Igor Kogan, who represented Arkadij Dvorkovich
Spectators in what was called the 'Washington room'...
...with on the front row Grischuk, Aronian, Karjakin, Kramnik, Gelfand...
...Eljanov, Mamedyarov, Shirov, Wang Hao and on the right Nakamura
Tournament director Alexander Bakh, who despite having to step down as President of the Russian Chess Federation still runs the tournament this year, as a contractor
Tournament organizer Ilya Levitov
Chief arbiter Geurt Gijssen performing the drawing of lots...
...where Mamedyarov picked number one...
...2 for Karjakin...
Aronian taking number 4, just like last year...
...last year's winner getting number 7...
...8 for Wang Hao...
...Gelfand got number 9...
...10 for Nakamura
Let the tournament begin - with Levon Aronian...
...and Vladimir Kramnik as top seeds
Link
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!
Company Contact and News Accreditation:
Email: peter@chess.com FOR SUPPORT PLEASE USE chess.com/support!
Phone: 1 (800) 318-2827
Address: 877 E 1200 S #970397, Orem, UT 84097
