The strongest open chess tournament starts today: International Chess Open Festival “Aeroflot Open 2007”
General information of the festival:
The International Chess Festival “Aeroflot Open 2007” will be held in Moscow from 13 February (the day of arrival) to 23 February 2007 (the day of departure).
The official hotel and tournament venue is hotel “Gamma-Delta” belonging to the Tourist Complex “Ismailovo”.
The Organizers of the Festival are the “Aeroflot-Russian Airlines”, the Association of Chess Federations and the Russian Chess Federation in cooperation with the Committee on Tourism of the Municipality of Moscow.
Type of Chess Festival: The festival consists of four tournaments. Each tournament is a nine rounds Swiss Tournament.
The Tournaments and Prize Fund: The total prize fund of the four tournaments is 200,000 USD.
Click here to see the list of all players. Here is the official website.
Yes, the official web-site for the Aeroflot tournament is really good: http://www.aeroflotchess.com .
The only important information missing is : the list of the players that have already secured a personal private restroom for themselves… 😛
In the B tournament plays Illya Nyzhnyk, the boy who won Moscow Open B group ( http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2007/02/incredible-performance-by-10-year-old.html )
Hou Yifan will play at Aeroflot. I remember Susan post a blog about new women GMs early this month. I am wondering if Hou Yifan, who has already got 2 GM norms (Torino Olympiad 2006 and Wijk aan Zee 2007) and rated >2500, has applied for the GM title. She won’t be 13 until the end of the month. She would be the youngest woman to be a GM at 12 years old.