Grenke Chess Festival 2019 containing Grenke Chess Open in three categories: A,B and C, and Grenke Chess Classic tournament gathering top world Grandmasters, started in Karlsruhe, Germany.
The festival has started with Grenke Chess Open, which is played from 18th-22nd of April. This year, the Open events gathered more than 2100 players coming from all over the world- more than 50 federations! The strongest A section features 956 competitors, among whom are 60 Grandmasters, 85 International masters, 6 Women Grandmasters, 15 Women International masters, and in total 339 titled players.
Top seeds of the A section are well known chess players, 21 of them rated over 2600: Bacrot Etienne (FRA, 2683), Kamsky Gata (USA, 2676), Korobov Anton (UKR, 2675), Firouzja Alireza (IRI, 2669), Kuzubov Yuriy (UKR, 2653), Chigaev Maksim (RUS, 2634), Sarana Maksim (RUS, 2634), Sarana Alexey (RUS, 2630), Fridman Daniel (GER, 2629), Sethuraman S.P. (IND, 2624), Predojevic Borki (BIH, 2621) and others.
The Opening ceremony and the first round of the Open events took place yesterday, while two rounds will be played today. The A event will be played in 9 rounds, Swiss system, with time control: 2h for 40 moves + 30 minutes for the rest of the game. Total prize fund of open events is 70.000 EUR, with 60.250 EUR reserved for the A section and 20.000 EUR for the Winner of A category.
Starting rank list, pairings and results are available here.
The main event of the Grenke Chess Festival, Grenke Chess Classic, starts tomorrow with participation of: World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen (NOR,), World No.2 Fabiano Caruana (USA, 2828), World No.6 Viswanathan Anand (IND, 2779), World No.7 Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (FRA, 2775), World No.12 Levon Aronian (ARM, 2761), World No.20 Peter Svidler (RUS, 2737), World No.35 Arkadij Naiditsch (AZE, 2710), World No.45 Francisco Vallejo Pons (ESP, 2698), World No.167 Georg Meier (GER, 2621) and World No. 6 U16 Vincent Keymer (GER, 2509).
Fabiano Caruana (USA, 2828) will try to defend the title of Grenke Chess Classic Winner in 2018, while we can watch the tournament LIVE, with the live commentary of Peter Leko and Jan Gustafsson.
Official Website- Grenke Chess Classic 2019
Official Website- Grenke Chess Open 2019
