7th Dubai Open Chess Championship
4/6/2005 – It is one of the strongest open chess tournaments in the world, with 53 grandmasters and 30 IMs (including five WGMs and seven WIMs) at last count. The 7th Dubai Open has been organised by the Dubai Chess & Culture Club under the auspices of H.H.Sheikh Rashid Bin Hamdan Al Maktum. The prize fund is US $40,000, with special prizes for local players of US $5,000. More...
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The event lasts from April 3rd to 13th, 2005. The rate of play in the nine-round Swiss tournament is one hour 30 minutes for the whole game with an incremental time of 30 seconds per move. The venue is the Dubai Chess & Culture Club. Personally invited Grandmasters with an Elo above 2600 receive free accommodation in single rooms in a three star hotel (those with a rating between 2550 and 2599 have to share the room with another Grandmaster).
The official web site is nicely designed and has the very cool Flash animation shown below. The contents (at the time of writing) were not quite up-to-date, and some of the links do not work correctly (go to the start page to access sub-pages like the individual round results – they do not work from the sub-pages).
Impressions of Dubai
By Andreas Albers
The skyline of Dubai city
The players' hotel
With a pool on the top of the building
View from the hotel room
On the shuttle bus: chief arbiter Casto Abundo bones up on the FIDE rules of
chess
The Dubai Chess & Culture Club, where the event is being held
Players arrive at the venue
Sheikh Rashid Bin Hamdan Al Maktum, patrons of the event
Members of the Chinese group
A colourful group of young ladies at the opening ceremony
Top seed Motylev Alexander (Russia, 2680) opens the tournament
IM Tea Bosboom-Lanchava (2359, Holland), held Motylev to a draw
The tournament in progress
The arbiters' table
GM Ghaem Maghami, Iran's top player
Links
Official web site (with live games and results)
