Chess Grand Slam Update

The new candidates for the Grand Slam Chess Association
Corus renamed Tata in 2011?
Report by Chessdom

One of the main decisions during the Grand Slam Chess Association during Corus is to increase the number of tournaments, shared the executive director of GSCA Silvio Danailov for Trud.bg. “There are 3 news candidates – from Moscow, London, and Romania. Our goal, however, is to popularize the Grand Slam out of Europe, that is why we will not hurry with accepting new candidates. There is a possibility to include events from Argentina and USA, I will be travelling to meet them in the near future,” informed Danailov.

He also confirmed the rumor that from 2011 the Corus chess tournament will be renamed to Tata. The reason is that the steel factory next to the city is expected to change their owners and name. This will not be the first tournament named after Tata, as recently they sponsored the Tata Steel Asian Women Team Chess Championship.

The candidates for the Grand Slam Chess

The host cities and events candidates for the GSCA that Danailov mentions in his interview are known. The one that most openly declared their desire for 2011 is the London Chess Classics. Via a press release Jeroen van den Berg informed, “Via Malcolm Pein the GSCA has received a request from a new tournament in London to enter the GSCA. The GSCA will decide about London’s participation in the Grand Slam after the players field has been announced. Since it is important to have a 3 years guarantee for each new tournament in the Grand Slam, the GSCA considers to include London as an invitational tournament for the year 2009.” As the tournament has already had one successful edition, it is clear that now the negotiations are in advanced fase.

The other two tournaments have mostly been rummored about – the Bazna Kings in Romania and the Tal Memorial in Russia. Both have had very strong editions last year, and are supposed to repeat the success in 2010 and 2011, thus making another step towards entering GSCA.

Grand Slam Final Masters 2010 in Bilbao and Shanghai

The 2010 finals of the Grand Slam will be split in two parts. The first part will be in Shanghai, China (September 3rd – 12th) and the second in Bilbao, Spain (October 6th-14th). It is expected the competition to have 8 participants, from which the only sure is Magnus Carlsen, who won Nanjing and Corus. As he has won the two events, it has been decided that there is a free spot that will be filled with the second placed player that has the best performance in any of the Grand Slam events. The next participant will be known at the end of Linares 2010, and the winner of Mtel Masters 2010 will be invited as well. Who will take the last 4 participants spots and how (invitational basis or position in Grand Slam events) is yet to be decided.