Shamkir Chess 2016 super tournament in the memory of Azerbaijani Grandmaster Vugar Gashimov starts on Thursday 26th May in Shamkir, the 8th largest city in Azerbaijan and the center of the Shamkir district.
The tournament is played as 9-round Round Robin, featuring ten top players: World #2 Fabiano Caruana (USA 2804) , World #4 Anish Giri (NED 2790), World #8 Sergey Karjakin (RUS 2779), World #12 Pavel Eljanov (UKR 2765), World #13 Harikrishna Pentala (IND 2763), World #18 Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (AZE 2748), Women’s World Champion Hou Yifan (CHN 2663) and three Azeri players Teimour Radjabov (2726), Eltaj Safarli (2664) and Rauf Mamedov (2655).
The time control of the event is 2 hours for 40 moves, followed by 1 hour for 20 moves + 15 minutes to finish the game, with a 30 seconds increment from move 61 onwards.
The tournament is organized traditionally, for the third time in honour to GM Vugar Gashimov one of the greatest and most talented players from Azerbaijan, who sadly died on January 10, 2014 at the age of 27 years.
The sponsor of the super tournament is Synergy Group, one of the largest private investment holdings in Azerbaijan.
The opening ceremony of the event will take place this evening in the Heydar Aliev Center in Shamkir, which is the official venue of the tournament.