Bilbao Grand Slam Final
The Bilbao super tournament will take place on September 2-13, 2008. The field is very strong with 6 players competing in a double round robin format: World Champion Anand, Tal Memorial winner Vassily Ivanchuk, former WC Veselin Topalov, the phenom Magnus Carlsen, Sochi Grand Prix runner up Teimour Radjabov and Sochi Grand Prix winner Levon Aronian.
Time control: 90 minutes for the first 40 moves and another 60 minutes to finish the game.
The total prize fund amounts to €400,000:
€150,000 for 1st
€70,000 for 2nd
€60,000 for 3rd
€50,000 for 4th
€40,000 for 5th
€30,000 for 6th
The players:
Anand, Viswanathan g IND 2798
Ivanchuk, Vassily g UKR 2781
Topalov, Veselin g BUL 2777
Carlsen, Magnus g NOR 2775
Radjabov, Teimour g AZE 2744
Aronian, Levon g ARM 2737
This tournament is a farce if it’s being promoted as a Classical event!
The time controls are very Unclassical!!
Looking forward to it. Avarage ELO 2769. Hope we’ll see lot of fight and decisive results. Good luck for Ivanchuk.
About participants from chessbase.com:
* Viswanathan Anand. Born in Madras (now Chennay, India, 1969) He is no doubt one of the greatest geniuses in chess history in the last fifteen centuries. But his easygoing character makes him the complete opposite of Fischer, Kárpov and Kaspárov. World champion and number one at the age of 38, he lives in Collado Mediano (Madrid), the rapid of Madras wants to polish even more his record in Bilbao at a month from the struggle for the crown with Russian Vladímir Krámnik. Part of his preparation will entail fighting for the first prize in the Grand Slam Final Masters in Bilbao: “Playing with the best ones in the world in a tournament like this one is an appropriate way to keep fit”.
* Magnus Carlsen. Tonsberg (Norway, 1990). His second places at the Wijk aan Zee Corus (Holland) 2008 and at the Ciudad de Linares 2008, when he repeated his 2007 achievement have made him deserve a special invitation for the Bilbao Grand Slam Chess Final Masters and show that this 17 year-old Norwegian is already mature for even greater achievements. He is Grandmaster ever since he was 13 years old, the third youngest in history and he is now second in the world’s ranking. Magnus Carlsen recommends parents of child prodigies: “to give them support but without putting pressure on them. My father taught me to play chess when I was five, but I wasn’t interested at the time and he left me alone”.
* Vasili Ivanchuk. Berezhany (Ukraine, 1969). His sensational victory in the Sofia’s Mtel Masters 2008 gave him the right to be in the Bilbao Final Masters. But even without this feat, Vasili Ivanchuk deserves a place among the top-class chess players: at almost 40, he is the oldest luminary though he is nevertheless at the peak of his career. Chess lover to the core, tireless worker of encyclopaedic knowledge he is a genius absent-minded wise man of whom everybody – even his most bitter rivals- speaks very fondly.
* Véselin Topálov. Ruse (Bulgaria, 1975). Natural, modest and very friendly; he is a fighter and well disciplined for his everyday training; and tries to keep a good image. That’s Véselin Topálov, the 33 year-old Bulgarian from Salamanca world chess champion in 2005 and currently number six in the chess rankings, with the clear aim to take up again the crown in 2009. His main challenge will be the Candidates Final against American Gata Kamski at the end of November. The winner will dispute the World Championship in 2009. Therefore, he arrives in the Bilbao Grand Slam Final Masters at a great time.
* Teimur Radyábov. Baku (Azerbaijan, 1987). Very few child prodigies have impressed so much as Teimur Radyábov. At 12, when he became European Champion U-18, he already showed a strategic depth and good manners not expected from someone of his age. At 14 he became grandmaster. At 15 he defeated Kaspárov with the black pieces in Linares. Today he is 21 and has settled among the elite, though everything shows that he’s still got a long way to go, as he will most probably demonstrate in Bilbao. Now Radyábov is undergoing a self debate about whether he should stick to his aggressive style of the last years or become more conservative and pragmatic.
* Levon Aronián. Yereván (Armenia, 1982). He is a great chess luminary: he is only 25 years old but he has already won the World Cup and the Linares and Wijk aan Zee (twice) tournaments. That naturalness, his universal style and belonging to a country where chess is the national passion, as well as a balanced nervous system configure the 25 year-old Armenian Levon Aronián as a very solid value. Prone to high risk in his games, Aronián is esteemed by both organisers and followers and could not miss the Bilbao Final Masters
Chucky is really restless, he appears to be playing in every tournament. That guy just breathes chess. Remarkable.
It’d would be really amazing if Ivanchuk will win Bilbao.
Is there a record for winning the most super tournament in one year?
Aronian is the man.
Watch him!
okay