Magnus helped Tromsø get the 2014 Chess Olympiad bid in Khanty-Mansiysk. Now he will turn his focus to Bilbao.
Carlsen, Anand, Kramnik, and Shirov to face off in Bilbao for the Grand Slam Final Masters.
Could Carlsen and Kramnik recover in time for this spectacular event? Could Anand dust off the rust from lack of tournament play lately to surpass Magnus on the world rating chart? Could Shirov continue to play dynamic chess to take out his opponents? We will have the answer in just a few days.
The Final Chess Masters 2010, organized by the Grand Slam Chess Association, consists of two parts. The first one was a qualification tournament in Shanghai, on 3-8th September, with the participation of Hao Wang, Alexey Shirov, Levon Aronian, and Vladimir Kramnik.
Two players from Shanghai, Alexei Shirov and Vladimir Kramnik, advanced to the second stage in Bilbao, where they will meet world’s top rated player Magnus Carlsen and the World Champion Viswanathan Anand.
The 2010 Final Masters will be played according to the Sofia rules (draws can be offered only through arbiters) and the Bilbao system (3 points for a win, 1 for draw, and 0 for loss). The Bilbao stage is taking place on 9-15th October.
The playing venue will be Alhóndiga Municipal de Bilbao. It is constructed in 1909 according to the project of Ricardo Bastida and is one of the emblematic buildings of the city. After passing through several stages the building was finally transformed into polivalent multicultural center which opened doors 18th of May, 2010.
Presentation and Anand’s simul
The presentation of the Final Masters was attended by the World Champion Viswanathan Anand. He played a simul against famous people from the region, such as the President of the Bizkaia Basketball Federation Jon X. Davalillo, the Euskatel team member Koldo Fernández de Larrea, the TV presenter Adela González, and the Euskadi chess champions Alejandro Franco and Isabel Menoyo.
A total of 24 boards were put for the simul and the record of Anand was 23,5/24. The only draw was against José Ramón Arrupe – a 80 years old chess player, who in the 1950s was 4 times champion of Spain. This is not the first time Arrupe draws against World Champions, he has done it twice against Anatoly Karpov and once against Ponomariov.
Oh they still workin on basketball! Susan ya know they thought they were dominating the Olympic until the U.S. sent that dream team over there with Magic, Bird and Jordan ya know? What they thought was competition actually just mysteriously degenerated into an exhibition, now you know the U.S. always find a tricky way of doin this stuff,Do you know i had Fischer waiting a whole HOUR on ICC play Svidler, first Peter said he was going to play but he was doin a lecture , so we waited then after the lecture he said his mouse was broke!!! its a lil know secret between us trick talkers. UM not nakamura either by the way, or kamsky UM somebody else thats why UM i told nige short he aint never seen nuttin like me before.
Susan i just got back from the week in chess site , they makin a big deal that ivanchuck won on Russian soil what is that suppose to mean?
Carlsen needs to quit his modeling nonsense and hit the chess books!
He can be world champion, he is behaving like rotten child.
Yo im meen thats my son in real life on the chessdrum, i know u might get it confused.