Tal Memorial In Moscow
The 2009 Tal Memorial tournament in Moscow runs from 5-14 November and features almost all the top players in the world today.
It's very rare for such a powerful line-up to be assembled and the event promises to be one of the strongest chess competitions ever held.
The format will be a 10-player single round-robin at the classical time control of 40 moves in 2 hours, followed by 20 moves in 1 hour, and then an extra 15 minutes plus a 15 second increment to a finish.
Games start at 3pm local time, except Monday 9 November which is a rest day. The official website (in Russian) is here.
Here is the full line-up. Last year's winner, Vassily Ivanchuk, is seeded joint last!
| Name | NAT | Elo | Rank |
| Carlsen, Magnus | NOR | 2801 | 2 |
| Anand, Viswanathan | IND | 2788 | 3 |
| Aronian, Levon | ARM | 2786 | 4 |
| Kramnik, Vladimir | RUS | 2772 | 5 |
| Gelfand, Boris | ISR | 2758 | 7 |
| Svidler, Peter | RUS | 2754 | 8 |
| Leko, Peter | HUN | 2752 | 9 |
| Morozevich, Alexander | RUS | 2750 | 10 |
| Ivanchuk, Vassily | UKR | 2739 | 12 |
| Ponomariov, Ruslan | UKR | 2739 | 13 |
So, going by the most recent rankings shown above, the only top 10 players missing are the #1 Veselin Topalov, and new #6 Vugar Gashimov. If any tournament this year will sort the men from the boys, the pretenders from the champions, THIS IS IT!
What will the players do to wind down after their exertions? Why, by playing a blitz tournament, of course! The World Blitz Championship will be held from 16-18 November and features a field of 22 players, including all ten Tal Memorial participants. Joining them are six qualifiers from the Aeroflot Open (Gashimov, Karjakin, Mamedyarov, Bareev, Tkachiev and Zhou Jianchao) and some specially invited guests (Karpov, Polgar, Grischuk, Jakovenko, Dominguez and Kosteniuk).
Look out for updates at Chess.com!
