Grand Slam Chess Final Masters Bilbao
It will become one of the most important tournaments in chess history thanks
to the level of the participants and the prizes at stake
Bilbao will be the Venue for the Grand Slam Chess Final Master
- The six participants are among the world’s top ten chess players: Viswanathan
Anand, Magnus Carlsen, Vasili Ivanchuk, Véselin Topálov, Teimur Radyábov and
Levon Aronián.
- For the first time they will play in the street, in a large glass case located
in the Plaza Nueva in Bilbao.
- The Final is sponsored by the Bilbao Town Hall, the Diputación Foral de
Bizkaia, the Basque Government, BBK, Euskaltel, FEVE and the Casco Viejo and
La Ribera Marketplace Retailers Association.
Bilbao will hold the first Grand Slam Chess Final Masters from 2nd through
13th September, which due to the level of the participants and the total prizes
amount will become one of the most important tournaments in chess history. Further
more, for the first time ever an event of such characteristics will take place
in the street, in the Plaza Nueva, right in the centre of Bilbao's Old Town.
The old city of Bilbao, where the Town Hall Place ("Plaza Nueve de
Bilbao") is located
The Final Masters is sponsored by the Bilbao Town Hall, the Diputación Foral
de Bizkaia, the Basque Government, BBK, Euskaltel, FEVE and the Casco Viejo
and La Ribera Marketplace Retailers Association. It will also count on the collaboration
of the Vizcaya and Basque Chess Federations, the Sheraton Hotel and Europcar.
The six players participating are currently among the world’s top ten chess
players, headed by world’s champion and number one Viswanathan Anand.
Along with him, Magnus Carlsen (number two**),
Vasili Ivanchuk (number three), Véselin Topálov (number six),
Teimur Radyábov (number seven) and Levon Aronián (world’s number
ten currently) will compete in Bilbao. Three of them have earned their invitation
to compete in Bilbao by winning the tournaments that together with Bilbao make
up the chess Grand Slam: Wijk aan Zee (Aronian), Linares (Anand) and Sofia (Ivanchuk).
Carlsen, Topálov and Radyábov have been invited due to their brilliant participations
in some of these tournaments. No tournament has so far managed to gather such
a high Elo’s average level (scoring system to order players’ ranking).
For the first time in a world’s elite tournament and surrounded by a strong
international controversy, the Final Masters is going to apply the football
scoring system, earning three points per game won and one point per draw, though
players will not be allowed to agree a draw being the competition’s referee
who will determine it.
The Final Masters has the official recognition of the International Chess Federation
(FIDE) and it will be played in a double round league during ten days (plus
a two-day break). Playing time will be 90 minutes for the first 40 moves and
another 60 minutes to finish the game. The total prize money amounts to €400,000,
sum only exceeded by the World Chess Championships: €150,000 for the first classified,
€70,000 for the second one, €60,000 for the third one, €50,000 for the fourth
one, €40,000 for the fifth one and €30,000 for the sixth one.
A unique chess venue: the La Plaza Nueva de Bilbao – the Town Hall
Place
Another great novelty in this tournament will be the playing place: the street,
allowing a lot of people to follow the games live and directly. A huge soundproofed
and air-conditioned glazed case is under construction to this purpose and it
will be placed in the Plaza Nueva in Bilbao under a marquee which will also
accommodate The Agora for analysis and comments, a space located by the glass
case where the audience will also be able to enjoy comments from Chess Grandmasters
among whom we can name Boris Spassky and Susan Polgar.
Play was conducted in a glass cabin in Vitoria Gasteiz, Spain, last year
The players (here Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu) are visible to the spectators at close
range
Building the sound-proof "cage" for a chess event, here this
year in Sofia
Ljubomir Ljubojevich, Boris Spassky, Leontxo García and Nicola Lococo
commenting the games last year
The Agora will be under the direction of journalist Leontxo García with the
collaboration of Nicola Lococo. Tables and chairs arranged in a “pavement café”
fashion will help following of the chess games in a collective, dynamic, open
and participating way, all in a relaxing atmosphere, commenting the games while
participating in informal gatherings and debates arisen around the competition.
One of the cozy shops and bars that surround the town square
Varied activities around the glazed case
This big space opened to everybody will also accommodate a large number of
activities connected to chess and addressed to very different people:
- I International Open “Vizcaya Chess Federation”. To be played by the first
100 players registering on Saturday morning 13th September with a total prize
money of €4,000.
- Rapid game tournament “Villa de Bilbao”. To be played daily by 120 players
maximum per day on the same days as the Final Masters between 17:00 and 19:00
hrs. This is one of the most spectacular chess modalities since each player
has only 5’ to perform all the movements, thus the game has a frantic playing
rate and a very aggressive style. Altogether more than €16,000 in prize money
to share out, as well as a journey to the M-Tel Tournament in Sofia, Bulgaria
2009 for two people.
- IV Euskadi Championship on Chess Problems Resolution. To take place on Friday
12th September (16:00 h.) also in the Plaza Nueva. The first 120 people to
register will participate and will have to solve 40 problems, having to determine
the first move that solves each of them within 30 minutes. There will be a
total prize money of €1,500 to be shared out among the first ten classified.
- Children activities. During the afternoons of this Tournament there will
also be a series of different activities for the youngest ones in the Plaza
Nueva, promoted by the Organization, BBK, Euskaltel and FEVE.
- The Experts’ Space. At this point and from 19:00hrs on chess experts from
all over the world, as grandmasters Txelu Fernández and Javier Moreno, will
comment on and discuss the games in progress for all those interested in depth
analysis.
- Double press room: in the Plaza Nueva, next to the glass case, and in the
premises of the Casco Viejo and La Ribera Marketplace Retailers Association.
Journalists from all continents have already expressed their wish to follow
live this tournament in Bilbao.
- The awards ceremony and the closing ceremony in the Plaza Nueva on Saturday
13th at 21:00 hrs.
Bilbao, revolution in the chess world
As commented earlier, the Bilbao Final Masters incorporates fantastic and significant
novelties with regard to what world’s elite tournaments have been so far, to
become a ‘revolution in chess’. Thus, aspects as innovative as playing in the
street, the erection of an air-conditioned glazed case, a scoring system similar
to that of the football, the impediment to end in a draw, a fast playing rate…
have never been seen before added to the multiple parallel activities for children
and adults or the incorporation of live commentators of international level.
But it is not surprising that Bilbao looks for innovation in chess hand by
hand with E-4 Chessport, organizers of the International Chess Festival 'Villa
de Bilbao’ in recent years from which the Final Masters 2008 is somehow heir.
In 2004 and 2005, encounters Man-Machine played by great grandmasters of first
order and the best computer software closed this debate in favour of silicon.
8.5 - 3.5 in 2004 and 8 - 4 in 2005.
The world famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao
Change was radical in 2006, looking for support on an almost unknown modality: blindfold
chess. Véselin Topálov and Judith Polgar competed in the Guggenheim Museum and
the picture of both blindfolded went around the world. Topálov won 3.5 – 2.5,
but above all chess won. 2007 challenge moved a step forward with the emergence
of the Blindfold Chess World Cup, which was finally won by Chinese Bu Xiang-zhi
against Topálov, Polgar, Kariakin, Carlsen and Harikrishna. This was also the
time when The Agora was given birth, before the audience, with live comments,
interviews, guests, huge screens, electronic chessboards…. This year, in Bilbao,
with the novelties described it is about chess moving one more step forward.
The six chief actors
-
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.
Bilbao, 1st July 2008
The web site for this event is still under construction
** This information is awaiting to the World Chess Federation’s
Foros Tournament approval.
