Third FIDE Grand Prix 2012-13 starts in Zug

From April 14 to April 30, 2013, the third stage of the FIDE Grand Prix Series 2012-2013 will take place in Zug, Switzerland. Twelve players will compete in a round robin tournament with time controls of 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 moves and then 15 minutes and an increment of 30 seconds per move for each player. The Grand Prix Series consists of six tournaments to be held over two years, with 18 top players, each participating in four of the six tournaments. The winner and second placed player overall of the Grand Prix Series will qualify for the Candidates Tournament to be held in March 2014.

Sponsoring the event is the Renova Group of companies, Russia's leading private business group that consists of asset management companies and direct and portfolio investment funds owning and managing assets in metals mining, machine building, mining, construction development, energy, telecommunications, nanotechnologies, utilities and financial sector in Russia and abroad.

Opening ceremony

The opening ceremony took place at the SwissEver Hotel Zug 6 p.m. on 17th of April. It was attended by FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, FIDE CEO Geoffrey Borg, Chief Risk and Compliance Officer from Renova Group Rolf Schatzmann, Director of the Sport Office of the Canton of Zug Cordula Ventura, Ambassador of the Republic of Azerbaijan Arkam Zeynalli, First Secretary of the Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ramin Mirzayev, First Secretary of the Embassy of the Russian Federation Konstantin Ushakov. And of course the players.

FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov greeted the participants, guests and expressed his gratitude to Renova Group and its chairman of the Board Directors Viktor Vekselberg, sponsors, mass media representatives for their support and dedication to chess. “I’m confident that we will all savor the hospitality of the people of Switzerland and will fully appreciate the high organizational level of this sport celebration!” said FIDE President.

On behalf of Renova Group Rolf Schatzmann (above) welcomed all officials, participants and wished the players to use the opportunity to learn more about the history of Switzerland, visit Zug and its suburbs. He also explained why Zug was chosen to host the third stage of Grand Prix: the chairman of the Renova Board Directors Viktor Vekselberg lives in here and he thought it would be nice idea to organize such an interesting chess event in the canton of Zug. Vekselberg is number 52 on the Forbes 2013 list of the world's top richest human beings.

Some background: The cooperation between AGON and FIDE was announced a year ago, and the Grand Prix venues for 2013 were supposed to be Lisbon in April, Madrid in May/June, Berlin in July and Paris in September. So far, however, AGON has not been able to sign sponsorship deals yet – and with Lisbon in danger of cancellation FIDE itself found the new sponsor for Zug. The FIDE team will be running the event, which meas there will be no deployment of the ChessCasting system developed by AGON and used in the Candidates Tournament in London last month.

The chief arbiter of the tournament Panagiotis Nikolopoulos conducted drawing of lots: each participant – above Teimour Radjabov – chose one of 12 boxes with famous Swiss chocolates and the starting number inside. Full pairings are given below.

Unhappy? Third seed Fabiano Caruana gets the start number three

A musical presentation, Swiss style with accordion, clarinet and contrabass

The playing venue, with live webcam broadcast on the Internet

At the technical meeting chief arbiter Panagiotis Nikolopoulos drew attention to the “no-draw offer” and "zero tolerance" rules. Players will not be allowed to offer draws directly to their opponents and will continue to play if the chief arbiter does not authorize a draw offer made through him. Draw claims will only be accepted in case of a three-fold repetition, a theoretically drawn position and according to the 50-move rule. The zero tolerance rule require players to be seated at their boards when the games are scheduled to start, or they will lose the game by default.

Zug, Switzerland

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Zug is a German-speaking city in Switzerland. The name ‘Zug’, which is pronounced "tsook", originates from fishing vocabulary; in the Middle Ages it referred to the right to ‘pull up’ fishing nets and hence to the right to fish. The oldest human traces date back to the time of around 14,000 BC. with Paleolithic finds coming from nomadic hunters and collectors. In addition, many traces from the Iron Age (850-50 BC) and the Roman and Celtic-Roman time (from 50 BC) have been discovered.

Wood cut of Zug in the 16th Century [photo Wikipedia]

Today the beautifully picturesque city has a total population of 26,000 [photo Wikipedia]

Night view of Zug and its lake [photo Wikipedia]

Information and pictures by FIDE press chief WGM Anastasiya Karlovich

Schedule and pairings

The games start at 14:00h European time, 16:00h Moscow, 8 a.m. New York. You can find your regional starting time here. The commentary on Playchess begins one hour after the start of the games and is free for premium members.

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.