Succesful 14th Corsican Circuit

Corsica, famous for being the birthplace of Napoléon Bonaparte, is also famous for being a land of chess. "L’île de beauté" ('isle of beauty') again hosted a powerful event. The 14th "Corsican Circuit" was held in Bastia and Aiacciu from October 24th to November 1st 2010 and arbiter FM Akkhavanh Vilaisarn reports.

By FM Akkhavanh Vilaisarn

In Corsica, since 2002, all tournaments are played under the "Corsican rule": draws by mutual agreement are entirely forbidden, which the arbiter summed up in these words: 'a quick draw is a quick zero'. So let’s fight!

Besides, the organizer Léo Battesti (President of the Corsica Chess League and Deputy President of the French Chess Federation) stresses on the fact that this rule has inspired the 'Sofia rule'...

The Corsica Masters was played according to a Swiss system. 14 players qualified from this open and were joined by Mamedyarov and Radjabov. Then a knockout with those 16 players was played.

The rate of play of the Swiss open was 1 hour and 30 minutes with 30 seconds increment per move. The rate of play of the knockout was 15 minutes with 3 seconds increment per move; one game with white and one game with black. In case of draw, then two blitz games (3 minutes + 2 seconds increment) and a possible Armageddon blitz game were played.

The Swiss tournament was dominated by the Moldavian gentleman Viktor Bologan. It was a very strong tournament since GMs such as Fedorchuk (2671) or Kurnosov (2659) didn’t manage to qualify.

As to the knockout, in front of 800 spectators crowding the Bastia theatre, Mamedyarov and Radjabov crushed their oponents and gained the tickets to the final in the imperial city. In front of 400 spectators crowding the Aiacciu Palace of congress, Mamedyarov, after hard-fought games, finally outplayed Radjabov in the blitz play-off.

The final big fight against Mamedyarov and Radjabov:

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Besides the Corsica Masters there were several side events:

• Two trophies "BNP Paribas" (one in Bastia and the other one in Aiaciu) for children under 16 with 30,000 euros of prizes!
  

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• A blitz tournament won (rather easily) by Mamedyarov with the perferct score of 9/9.
• A blindfold simultaneous by Loek van Wely against 6 Corsican chess club’s Presidents (rated from 1700 to 2000 Elo). The result was a merciless 6/6 for the Dutch grandmaster.
  

  Van Wely playing blindfold, not in Nice but in Corsica this year

• A simultaneous exhibition against 60 players, given by Mamedyarov, Radjabov, Fressinet and Bologan.

Here's a video of this simul exhibition:

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Games knockout phase

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Photos © Corsica Chess Circuit

Links

• Official website
• Collection of videos and photos
• Games in PGN