7th London Chess Classic begins tomorrow

The 7th London Chess Classic, England's premier tournament, takes place at its traditional venue of Kensington Olympia from Friday December 4th to Sunday December 13th. The main event, the strongest ever held in the UK, is a nine-round ten-player super tournament played at a rate of 40 moves in 2 hours, followed by the rest of the game in one hour with a 30-second increment from move 41. The overall prize fund is $300,000, with the winner getting $75,000.

The event climaxes the 2015 "Grand Chess Tour", founded as a partnership between the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis which stages the Sinquefield Cup, Tower AS who organise Norway Chess 2015 and Chess Promotions Ltd, the rights owners of the London Chess Classic. Each tournament in the Grand Chess Tour has a prize fund of $300,000 and there is a bonus pool of $150,000 for the top three finishers in the Grand Tour based on their overall performance to make a total prize fund of over one million dollars.

Invitations: The organizers of the Grand Chess Tour started with the January 2015 FIDE Rating List and sought players that demonstrate the highest levels of sportsmanship and professionalism. We invited the top-10 players in the world, eight of whom have confirmed their participation.

Player Event Commitment: The nine players have agreed to participate in all three 2015 Grand Chess Tour Events. A tenth player will be selected as a wildcard to each individual event by the organizing committee.

Tour Points: Players will earn Tour Points based on their final standing in each event. Players with the most Tour Points at the end of the Grand Chess Tour earn extra prize money for their overall performance across all three events (Table 1).

Prize Fund: At the conclusion of the Grand Chess Tour, the top-three players (by Tour Points) will take home an additional $150,000 (Table 2).

Drawing of Lots: Drawing of lots will be determined by a blitz tournament at Norway Chess 2015. Pairing numbers will be reversed at the Sinquefield Cup, and the London Chess Classic will draw lots randomly.

Arbitration: Should any GCT regulations require interpretation or clarification, arbitration shall be performed by the Arbitration Committee, comprised of one representative from each event.

2016 Qualification: The top-three players from the 2015 Grand Chess Tour, as well as the reigning World Champion, qualify automatically for the 2016 Grand Chess Tour.

Draw and pairings

The draw for the highly anticipated London Chess Classic was performed by Tournament Director Malcolm Pein and Deputy Arbiter David Sedgwick with the pupils of Marion Richardson Primary School on Monday 23rd November.

In accordance with the arrangements notified in St Louis, the colours were reversed from the Sinquefield Cup, with Michael Adams playing the opposite colours to Sinquefield Cup wild card Wesley So.

The players were placed in two groups of five. Viswanathan Anand, Fabiano Caruana, Alexander Grischuk, Veselin Topalov and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave will play five games with the white pieces and were randomly allocated numbers 1-5. Michael Adams, Levon Aronian, Magnus Carlsen, Anish Giri and Hikaru Nakamura will play five games with the black pieces and were randomly allocated numbers 6-10.

The results of the draw were as follows:

1. Veselin Topalov
2. Alexander Grischuk
3. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave
4. Fabiano Caruana
5. Viswanathan Anand
6. Michael Adams
7. Levon Aronian
8. Magnus Carlsen
9. Hikaru Nakamura
10. Anish Giri

This resulted in the folloing pairings and schedule:

Note that the games generally start at 16:00h (4 p.m.) local time, which translates to 17:00h CET, 11 a.m. New York, 9:30 p.m. New Delhi and 19:00h Moscow. Here is the starting time at your location. On the weekends, however, the games start two hours earlier.

Watch it live on Playchess!

When the games are running, clicking on the above link will take you to our live broadcast. If the games have not yet started you will see the earlier games. It is free and open to all – as a Premium Account member you have access to the Live Book, Chat, chess engine analysis – all in your browser, on a notebook, tablet or even your smartphone. And the Let's Check function will show you what the most powerful computers in the world think of the current position, as each move is being played.

Live commentary on Playchess

Links Official tournament site Download all games in PGN The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.