Grand Slam Press Release

Press Release from the Grand Slam Chess Association

The Spanish chess player Alexei Shirov has received the invitation from the Grand Slam Chess Association to take part in the Masters Final that will be held in Bilbao during the first fortnight of September 2009.

He has been invited as winner of the recently finished M-Tel Masters Tournament in Sofia, Bulgaria. He received his invitation at the closing ceremony from Juan Carlos Fernández, Director of the Bilbao Masters Final.

Shirov will come up against Veselin Topalov – winner in Pearl Spring Tournament, Nanking, China, Sergei Kariakin – winner of Corus 2009, Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands and Alexander Grischuk, winner of Ciudad de Linares, Spain, who have already received their invitations to the Final in Bilbao.

The above mentioned four chess players will compete in Bilbao, once again in the huge glass cube that will be built in Plaza Nueva (central square), in the heart of the city. The Masters Final supports interesting and novel rules in order to guarantee a battle and spectacle in each game. The so called named ‘Sofia rule’ which states that draw offers will only be allowed by the arbiter, will be applied.

The scoring system will be once again similar to football scoring system:

Players will get 3 points for winning a match, 1 point for drawing and 0 points for losing. This scoring system was first applied in an elite chess tournament during the last Bilbao Final Masters 2008, and is known as ‘Bilbao rule’.

The Grand Slam is made up of the following tournaments: the Pearl Spring Tournament (Nanjing, China), the Corus (Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands), the Ciudad de Linares (Spain), the Mtel Masters (Sofia, Bulgaria) and the Masters Final that will be held in Bilbao, Spain.

Alexei Shirov is a Spanish national, born in Riga, Latvia in 1972. After his win in Sofia he is ranked 5th in the world. Shirov is noted for his attacking style and he has pointed out that aggressiveness is an essential feature of his playing style. He has been called “the last romantic chess player”, or the “Leonardo da Vinci” of chess, thanks to his creative style along with the risks he takes while playing. In 2000, Teheran, he reached the final of the FIDE World Chess Championship, losing to Viswanathan Anand. In 2007 he played in the Chess World Cup 2007, but he lost the final to Gata Kamsky.

Grandmaster Alexander Grischuk was born in 1983 in Russia. Along with being a very talented young player, Grischuk is also known as one of the best blitz chess players, taking him on to win the 2006 World Blitz Championship in Israel.

Sergey Karjakin, born in Ukraine in 1990, holds the record for the youngest grandmaster in history, achieving the title at the age of twelve years and seven months. In 2004 he was in Bilbao as player in the Man vs. Machine World Team Championship.

Karjakin, who was then 14, was the only human to win against a computer. In 2007 he played the Blindfold World Chess Cup again in Bilbao. He is a very talented player who guarantees a splendour future for himself, not only for his great command of tactics but also for his gift for strategy, a rare thing in children. It is for this reason that the pools for future World Champion always include Karjakin.

Veselin Topalov (born in Bulgaria in 1975) is a modest and very nice person, a fighter and disciplined into training every day and strives to maintain his correct demeanour. Topalov became the FIDE World Chess Champion in 2005. As the current highest ranked player in the World, he is adamant about achieving the title in the final that he will face against Anand.

Next September in Bilbao, he will try to repeat his win of the Final Masters 2008. Veselin is a familiar face in Bilbao, his presence as player is habitual in the great chess events of the city in the last years.

Bilbao, June 4th, 2009