San Fermin Masters Final
Pamplona is known worldwide for its Running of the Bulls yearly event. The encierro is the highest-profile event of the San Fermin Festival. Due to the sanitary crisis, the mayor of Pamplona, Enrique Maya, officially announced in April that the event would not be held this year, noting that “the rate of infections remains high, while the rate of vaccinations is not as fast as they had hoped”.
Luckily for chess fans, Pamplona’s City Council, aided by artist-entrepeneur Mikel Urmenenta and chess24, and sponsored by SEBA Bank AG, decided to host a chess event instead.
Let endgame expert Dr Karsten Müller show and explain the finesses of the world champions. Although they had different styles each and every one of them played the endgame exceptionally well, so take the opportunity to enjoy and learn from some of the best endgames in the history of chess.
The local authorities managed to attract none other than Magnus Carlsen to make his way to the capital city of Navarra. The world champion is set to take part in an 8-player online knockout tournament throughout the weekend.
Carlsen is joined by Wesley So, Ding Liren and Levon Aronian as the invited players who will face four grandmasters that gained the right to participate by winning qualifying tournaments. The quarterfinals are taking place on Saturday, while the semifinals and final will be played on Sunday. The full schedule (all CEST):
- Quarterfinals (July 10)
- 16:00: Ding vs. Santos (Ding beat Santos 4½-1½)
- 18:00: Aronian vs. Abdusattorov
- 20:30: Carlsen vs. Iturrizaga
- 22:00: So vs. Le
- Semifinals: July 11 at 14:00 and 16:00
- Final: July 11 at 19:00
Each match consists of eight 3+2 blitz games. If the players are tied, another pair of 3+2 games is played. If still tied, the match will be decided in an Armageddon game, where White has 5 minutes to Black’s 4, but a draw counts as a win for Black.
Click to enlarge
Carlsen was named the ‘Foreigner of the Year’ in Pamplona — guiri, not Giri, although it’s pronounced exactly the same way!
Scarcely any world champion has managed to captivate chess lovers to the extent Carlsen has. The enormously talented Norwegian hasn't been systematically trained within the structures of a major chess-playing nation such as Russia, the Ukraine or China.
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