Upcoming events

After a period of overkill (EU Ch, Baku, M-Tel...) it's a bit quiet these days, but many interesting events are about to start.

The Bosna 2008 tournament in Sarajevo has started yesterday, with almost the same field as last year. The only difference: Nigel Short has been replaced by Lenier Dominguez, who recently won the Capablaca Memorial. (Small intermezzo: European Champion Tiviakov played there too - he likes to play chess but also likes to take photos.) Top seeded player is Alexander Morozevich.

The tournament is a double round-robin with also Sergei Movsesian, Ivan Sokolov, Artyom Timofeev and Borki Predojevic. In the first round, Dominguez beat Predojevic; Morozevich escaped with a draw against Sokolov.

Today the King's Tournament in Bazna, Romania starts. Here too, the field is very similar like last year's with Zoltan Ribli and Maia Chiburdanidze replaced by Nigel Short and Andrei Murariu. They play with many other famous names: Andersson, Beliavsky, Khalifman, Mecking, Murariu, Portisch, Ribli, Andrei Sokolov, Suba, Timman and Vaganian.

This "tournament of old friends" will probably see many quick draws (here we go again), and we'll have to wait and see whether co-editor Arne finds them difficult to create! The fight for first place between Short, Khalifman and Beliavsky could be pretty interesting.

Then, at the end of this month, there's so much chess that you might feel sick of it afterwards! May 28-June 1 there's the annual rapid match with Peter Leko in Miskolc, Hungary. This year his opponent is Magnus Carlsen.

Almost at the same time (May 28-June 1) four players will go for Advanced Chess in L?ɬ©on, Spain: Anand, Ivanchuk, Shirov and Vallejo. It's interesting to see whether Ivanchuk can advance his chess even more!

Many strong players will compete in the Finals of the French League, in the same weekend of May 29-June 1.

The, on May 30 the 4th Pivdenny Bank Chess Cup starts. This rapid event is played in Odessa, Ukraine from May 30 to June 2 and stars Karpov and Korchnoi as well as Ponomariov, Gelfand, Beim, Tregubov, Golubev and Drozdovsky.

Main sources: Dennis Monokroussos and TWIC.

Want to check out more events? Why not check out our Chess Events Calendar?