Pestaño: Major chess tournaments

CHESS is alive like never before. Four major tournaments are going on almost at the same time—the Millionaire Chess, Pokerstars, the World Rapid and Blitz Championship plus the Grand Prix for women.

For other players, the GMs and IMs who don’t want to compete with the elite players and have some chance to earn good money, there are plenty of other tournaments to choose from—the Mikhail Chigorin Memorial 2015, the European Universities Chess Championships, Dubai Chess, Georgian Club Championship 2015, Poikovsky Chess 2015 and a few more.

Also showing at major cities worldwide to fully packed movie houses is Pawn Sacrifice , a Tobey Maguire movie about the life of Bobby Fischer, the most loved, and later the most-hated American, in history.

Millionaire Chess is what it is--the richest open tournament in history which just concluded in Las Vegas with a total of $1 million in prizes. Wesley So won the first edition last year.

The Open section had a $100,000 top prize. Even the 1400U winner got $38,000 and the 1200U another $20,000. There were prizes for the fifth to 10th finishers in each section of the tournament, which had more than 600 participants.

US-based Cepca member Josito Dondon played in the 2200U category and scored a respectable four points.

The format in the Open section was seven rounds with the top four advancing to a knockout system. After seven rounds the top three qualifiers were Aleks Lenderman, Le Quang Liem and Yu Yangyi. Tied at fourth place were nine players, including Wesley and Hikaru Nakamura. After blitz tiebreaks among the nine players Nakamura snared the last slot.

Nakamura went on to defeat Yu Yangyi and finally Liem to win the $100,000 top prize.

Pokerstars, in recognition of a great number of chess players who have also turned to poker, is sponsoring a second chess tournament at their Isle of Man headquarters. At any one time 25,000 to 30,000 tables are being played in their website.

The format was a nine-round open tournament and the participants were headed by Michael Adams (2742), Pentala Harikrishna (2737), David Howell (2705), Laurent Fressinet (2702), Arkadij Naiditsch (2684), Gabriel Sargissian (2679), Nigel Short (2678), Julio Granda Zuniga (2667), Sergei Movsesian (2658) and Daniel Fridman (2642).

Pentala Harikrishna took the winner’s trophy after edging Laurent Fressinet and Gabriel Sargissian on tie-break.
The World rapid championship, with 184 GMs, was played over 15 rounds in Berlin with five rounds slated on each day. Magnus Carlsen won the title after winning the blitz format of 21 rounds.

The first leg of the women’s Grand Prix Series 2015-2016 took place in Monte Carlo, from Oct. 2 until today. The Prize fund is 60, 000 Euros, with 10, 000 for the winner.

The line-up includes: Yifan Hou (2671), Humpy Koneru (2578), Nana Dzagnidze (2573), Anna Muzychuk (2549), Alexandra Kosteniuk (2530), Mariya Muzychuk (2528) ,Pia Cramling (2513), Antoaneta Stefanova (2500), Natalia Zhukova (2482), Natalija Pogonina (2445), Almira Skripchenko (2441) and Sarasadat Khademalsharieh (2397). Yifan is leading with 7.5 points after 9 rounds.

SCHOOL CHESS. The Marie Ernestine- chess tournament for their Talamban campus will be held at Handuraw Gorordo tomorrow starting at 2 p.m. It will be conducted by their school chess instructor Therese dela Torre. The sponsors are Engr. Marvynne Guardiana, Atty. Jennoh Tequillo, Jojo Muralla, Handuraw and Cepca.

The Cepca October tournament follows on Sunday, also at Handuraw, at 2 p.m. Children of Cepca members and lady varsity players can also play.