Russian Ch Superfinal starts

And you thought the chess year 2007 was kind of over, now that the World Cup has finished? On the contrary. Besides the traditional big bunch of tournaments around New Year, such as Hasting & Rilton Cup (see the grey column on the right for more), one more event with a few supergrandmasters is held this month: the Russian Championship Superfinal. The strongest seeds are Svidler, Morozevich and Grischuk.

At the same time, a men's and a women's event are being held in Moscow, from 17 till 30 December. Both tournaments are twelve-player round-robins and the Sofia rule applies: draw offers are not allowed.

Unfortunately title holder Alekseev, as well as Kosteniuk and Galliamova, had to withdraw from the tournament, but still the participants list looks impressive. Here's the pairings for today's first round:

[TABLE=66]

Play starts at 15:00 hours Moscow time, which is 13:00 CET. Live games here. The time control for the men is almost as complicated as a Poisened Pawn Najdorf: they will have 1 hour and 40 minutes for the first 40 moves, then 50 minutes for the next 20 moves and 10 minutes to end the game, with and addition of 30 seconds each move, starting from move 1. The women will play with 1 hour and 30 minutes for the first 40 moves, then 30 minutes to end the game, also with 30 seconds increment.