4th Zurich Chess Challenge 2015

4th Zurich Chess Challenge 2015
Again a Tournament of Superlatives

From 13 to 19 February 2015, the world chess elite will arrive again in Zurich to the fourth edition of the «Zurich Chess Challenge» at the Hotel Savoy Baur en Ville. With Fabiano Caruana, the superior winner of the recently concluded Super Tournament in St. Louis, the currently most attractive chess player comes to our city, where he meets the former World Champions Viswanathan Anand and Vladimir Kramnik, and the absolute top players Levon Aronian, Sergey Karjakin and Hikaru Nakamura.

A blitz tournament will determine the colors distribution on the first day. Five rounds of classical chess will then be played from Saturday, February 14th to Wednesday, February 18th, followed by a rapid tournament with reversed colors on the last day (February 19th). A won game in the classical tournament counts two points, draws one point. Wins in the rapid tournament count one point and draws half a point.

All games will be commented live and broadcast worldwide via the Internet on the official web site. Admission to the classical and rapid games of this formidable event is free and no previous registration of spectators is required.

The main sponsor of the Zurich Chess Challenge, Oleg Skvortsov,
who announced the fourth edition on his 45th birthday earlier this year

This tournament is made possible again by the generous support of Oleg Skvortsov, owner of the «International Gemological Laboratories» in Moscow and a passionate strong chess player with good personal relationships to the entire world elite of chess.

Participants

Average rating: 2786 = Category XXII

Schedule, rate of play

The event is a six player round robin, with a rate of play of 40 moves in 120 minutes, then 20 moves in 60 minutes and the rest of game in 15 minutes, with an increment of 30 seconds per move starting after move 61. Special rule: in case of a draw before move 40, an additional rapid game will be played (which does not count for the overall result).

All games will be commented by Yannick Pelletier and Werner Hug and broadcast live via Internet.

The venue

The tournament takes place in the time-honored Hotel «Savoy Baur en Ville» (Paradeplatz,
Zurich, Switzerland) in the «Festsaal», the venue of many a famous chess event in the past.

The main sponsor,«IGC International Gemological Laboratories», is a Russian institute providing gemological services, such as diamond grading reports, enhanced diamonds identification as well as certification of diamonds, gemstones and jewelry in the Russian Federation. IGC is the Russian branch of GCI, a group of gemological laboratories worldwide.

Co-Sponsors: Savoy Chess Corner, Zurich Chess Club (founded 1809, the oldest existing chess club in the world). Organisation: Schachgesellschaft Zürich (Zurich Chess Club). Contact: media@sgzurich.ch

The Schachgesellschaft Zürich, which was founded in 1809. Its historical development has been retraced by Richard Forster and Christian Rohrer in a series of articles for us:

• The World’s Oldest Chess Club: Part I (1809–1914)
• The World’s Oldest Chess Club: Part II (1914–1945)
• The World’s Oldest Chess Club: Part III (1945–1961)
• The World’s Oldest Chess Club: Part IV (1975 to the present)
• The 2009 Jubilee page of the Zurich Chess Society (+ Jubilee book in PDF)

The first Zurich Chess Challenge in 2012 was a match between Kramnik and Aronian. The second event in 2013 was a double-round robin with Kramnik, Anand, Caruana and Gelfand. The third took place from January 29 to February 4 this year. These were the final scores:

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games will be 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 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.