Amateurs and stars side by side

The idea comes from New York chess organiser, Jose Cuchi. Alfonso Pedraza, a very well know Spanish organizer, and the Bali Hotel in Benidorm, picked up the format and are staging a Festival which runs from November 22 to December 1, 2002. There are almost 300 participants from 17 countries. The "Stars Tournament" runs from Nov. 29 to Dec. 1st and is a 12 players round robin. Rate of play: 15 minutes plus 10 seconds per move.

The Star players are:

• Ruslan Ponomariov UKR 2743 g
• Alexei Shirov ESP 2699 g
• Anatoli Karpov RUS 2688 g
• Judith Polgar HUN 2685 g
• Lev Psakhis ISR 2588 g
• Bojan Kurajica BIH 2548 g
• Reynaldo Vera CUB 2544 g
• Dragan Paunovic YUG 2532 m
• Sergey Karjakin UKR 2527 g
• Pablo San Segundo ESP 2523 g
• Claudia Amura ARG 2363 wg
• Antonio Granero ESP 2342 m
  

Prize fund:

   1.   4.200
   2.   2.400
   3.   1.800
   4.   1.200
   5.   1.200
   6.   1.200
   7.     600
   8.     600
   9.     600
  10.     600
  11.     600
  12.     600

One of the targets of this year's Benidorm tournament is to promote next year's edition of the event, scheduled for November 2003. The organisers inform us that this tournament will be announced in January 2003, giving enough time to many European and American amateurs to plan their holidays.

• Official web site
• Games played so far