The Chess Federation of Sri Lanka on behalf of FIDE and Asian Chess Federation cordially invite your Federation to participate in the Asian Junior and Girls U 20 Chess Championships to be held at Ceylon Continental Hotel, Colombo, Sri Lanka. According to FIDE regulations, only those born on or after 1st January 1989 are eligible to participate in the Championships.
Vassily Ivanchuk arrived to Prague directly from Sofia, where he had just finished participation in the Mtel Masters Tournament. “Mr. Ivanchuck came with good spirit”, said the festival director, Pavel Matocha. “He doesn’t know the reasons for his poor result in Sofia and he probably isn’t even thinking about that.”
Peter Leko and Viswanathan Anand played against each other for the first time in a blitz game in 1994 and, since then, they competed in 72 games. They played classical, rapid, blind and blitz games, respectively. Anand is leading by 21-7, 45 games were draws. In rapid games the Indian world champion won seven times, lost three times and ten games were draws.
The eight-game match in rapid chess, where the best Czech chess player David Navara will play against grandmaster Vassily Ivanchuk, is going to take place between 27th to 31st May 2009 at Best Western Kampa hotel in Prague. It will be a rapid match with a similar format to last year’s match against Kramnik. The action starts at 17:00 CET on Wednesday May 27th. Two games will be played daily, with Friday 29th as a rest day.
The national Chinese chess championship for women will take place in Xinghua, May 25 – June 6, 2009. Top seeded will be GM Zhao Xue, and she will have strong competition in a round robin event of 12 players.
The organizers ROMGAZ Association and Chess Club “Elizabeth Polihroniade” Bucharest have adopted a new tournament format – six players double round robin to be split between Bucharest and Bazna. Invited players are Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan, ELO 2756, 5th place in the world), Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukraine, ELO 2746, 12), Alexei Shirov (Spain, ELO 2745, 13), Boris Gelfand (Israel, ELO 2733, 15), Gata Kamsky (USA, ELO 2720, 24), and Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu, the best Romanian player ever and former European champion in 2005 (ELO 2675, 55).
The tournament is a round robin event with rest day May 16th. Four rounds have been played and it is no surprise that the only GM of the field – Aleksandr Shimanov – is leading with 3,5/5. However, it will not be an easy task for him as FM Daniil Dubov (13 years old, yet 2nd place among U16 in Russia!), IM Narayanan Srinath (one of the top India talents), Vladimir Belous (yet untitled, but with 2400+), FM Ivan Bukavshin (14 years old, yet second place U18 in Russia!) are all with 3,0/5, just half a point behind the leader.
Sasikiran, Wesley So, and Zhou Jianchao top seeded The Asia Continental Chess Championship is going to take place in Subic Freeport, Philippines. The championship starts on May 12 and it is the qualification for the World Cup scheduled 20 Nov. to 15 Dec. 2009 in Khanty Mansiysk (Russia), and to the Women’s World Championship next [...]
The 2009 edition of the Bosna chess tournament will take place 8-18 May in Sarajevo. Six strong grandmasters will participate in the event. Top seeded is GM Sergei Movsesian (SVK, ELO 2747), who will compete with GM Wang Hao (CHN, ELO 2696), GM Pavel Eljanov (UKR, ELO 2693), GM Pentala Harikrishna (IND, ELO 2686), GM Ivan Sokolov (NED, ELO 2669), and GM Borki Predojevic (BIH, ELO 2652).
The 17th Sigeman Co Chess Tournament is set to take place on 3-7th June 2009. The tournament will be played at the classical Hipp Theater in central Malmo, for the twelfth time. This year, the event has a new format, with only six players playing five rounds. England’s legend GM Nigel Short, rated 2674, is top-seeded player. Short is returning to Malmo after a seven years break, previously he had won the 2002 edition which was of 13th FIDE category.
