The 47th edition of the Ilmar Raud Memorial is taking place on July 1st-7th at the Viljandi Sports Center in Vaksali, Estonia. The event is played in memorial of the 100th birthday of member of the Estonian team that scored 3rd at the Chess Olympiad in Buenos Aires.
Individual Swiss system tournament in one group with 9 rounds. Each player will have 1 hour 30 minutes for the first 40 moves and 15 minutes for the rest of the game + 30 additional seconds after each move.
The event will be submitted for FIDE and Estonian Elo ratings.
The prizes are as following: 1st – 1.500 Euros; 2nd – 1.000 Euros; 3rd – 700 Euros; 4th – 400 Euros, etc.
A total amount of 70 players are participating, they come from nine different countries. Ten grandmasters and eight International Masters are among them. Veterans Alexander Khalifman and Jaan Ehlvest are the first seeds.
Official website
Participants (top seeds):
1 GM Khalifman Alexander RUS 2630
2 GM Ehlvest Jaan USA 2623
3 GM Kulaots Kaido EST 2581
4 IM Kovalev Vladislav BLR 2558
5 GM Neiksans Arturs LAT 2554
6 GM Miezis Normunds LAT 2549
7 GM Kanep Meelis EST 2512
8 GM Volodin Aleksandr EST 2485
9 GM Kveinys Aloyzas LTU 2479
10 IM Krivonosov Oleg LAT 2471
11 GM Shvyrjov Igor EST 2461
12 IM Sepp Olav EST 2442
13 GM Sriram Jha IND 2437
14 IM Agopov Mikael FIN 2429
15 IM Sipila Vilka FIN 2423
Khalifman still plays chess?