7th Dubai Open Chess Championship

by ChessBase
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)


Reports about chess: tournaments, championships, portraits, interviews, World Championships, product launches and more.

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