President's Cup – FIDE World leads after two rounds

The President's Cup – Azerbaijan vs FIDE World – is an eight-round rapid chess tournament pitting the best players in the Republic of Azerbaijan against a FIDE selection of top players from the rest of the world. The latter includes current World Champion Vishwanathan Anand and former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik. The games are played in the capital Baku, in the "UNS" Creative Stage theatre, starting in the late afternoon local time – 15:00h CEST.

First day

Live coverage on the Internet was fraught with problems, with the feed from Baku dropping out a number of times, and then being resumed with illegal moves. With the help of Fritz we have tried to reconstruct as much as possible, but naturally we cannot be sure that we have got everything right (and indeed some games are obviously incomplete). So we will have to make do with the bare results. The games in our version can be downloaded using the link at the bottom of this page.

Chess Oscar

Anand (right) receives the Chess Oscar from FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov

The Chess Oscar is awarded by the Russian chess magazine “64 – Chess Review” on the basis of a poll carried out amongst chess journalists and experts. It was won for the sixth time by Indian GM Viswanathan Anand, the reigning Chess World Champion, who is the only non-Russian to have won the award more than five times (Fischer won it three times, Kasparov eleven times). The Oscar comes in the form of a statuette also called the "Fascinated Wanderer".

The audience during the Opening and Award ceremony

Let the games begin: Teimour Radjabov vs Vishy Anand in round one was a draw

Vladimir Kramnik on board two plays against Vugar Gashimov – draw

Gadir Guseinov held Ukrainian and soon-to-be Russian star Sergey Karjakin to a draw

The only decided game in round one: Shakhriyar Mamedyarov beat Alexei Shirov

The carpeted playing area during round one (with clockwise Radjabov-Anand, Mamedyarov-Shirov,
Guseinov-Karjakin and Gashimov-Kramnik. In the background arbiter Alexander Bakh.

All pictures by photos by "TAG Sport", provided by Sarkhan S.M. Hashimov

The teams

Azerbaijan	FIDE World
Teimour Radjabov Born 12.03.1987 Rating 2761	Viswanathan Anand (India) Born 11.12.1969 Rating 2783
Vugar Gashimov Born 24.07.1986 Rating 2730	Vladimir Kramnik (Russia) Born 25.06.1975 Rating 2759
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov Born 12.04.1985 Rating 2725	Alexei Shirov (Spain) Born 04.07.1972 Rating 2745
Gadir Guseinov Born 21.05.1986 Rating 2659	Sergei Karjakin (Ukraine) Born 12.01.1990 Rating 2721
Rauf Mamedov Born 26.04.1988 Rating 2645

Schedule

Links Official tournament site All available games in PGN The games are bing being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download the free PGN reader ChessBase Light, which gives you immediate access. You can also use the program to read, replay and analyse the PGN games.