53rd New Year’s tournament in Reggio Emilia : player’s list out!
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Circolo Ippogrifo has announced the player’s list for the 53rd New Year’s tournament taking place in Reggio Emilia. The tournament will be held from the 28th of December to the 6th of January on an all-play-all grid. The players list is quite impressive: based on the September Elo rating list, the tournament would be a Category XVIII, which was only achieved on the memorable record-breaking 1991-92 edition, which fielded players of the level of Kasparov, Karpov and Anand, who won with 6 out of 9.
No less than 9 of the top 50 players in the world will be taking part in this edition, so, while not quite achieving the heady heights of that early nineties tournament, the starting line up is nonetheless quite remarkable, so our warmest congratulations must go to the Circolo Ippogrifo tournament organisers, who are being helped this year by Scacchi Randagi and Accademia Internazionale degli Scacchi.
Scacchierando.net/dblog, the most famous italian chess blog, will be official partner for every info, game, interwiev, photo and video.
Players of this calibre hardly need an introduction, but I can’t help anticipating a few particularly exciting names :
1) Vassily Ivanchuk Currently ranked 9th in the world, 41 years old, was also on the roster of the 1991-92 edition, where he came in 5th with 4.5 out of 9 .
2) Alexander Morozevich 33 years old , was ranked 4th in the world just 2 years ago before going through a bad patch, where he entertained thoughts of retirement. But news is out that after his poor showing in Pamplona he has got his motivation back, and is preparing his return to the top of the grading list !
Italy will be represented by Fabiano Caruana ( equal 3rd – 4th last year ) , who finally reached the 2700 mark ( but is already at 2709 in the Live Rating ) and Michele Godena, also returning after a spectacular showing last year ( equal 3rd – 4th too ! ) where he finished unbeaten with a 2714 performance.
The full player’s list :
Vassily Ivanchuk UKR 2754
Sergei Movsesian SVK 2723
David Navara CZE 2722
Vugar Gashimov AZE 2719
Fabiano Caruana ITA 2700
Alexander Morozevich RUS 2700
Francisco Vallejo Pons ESP 2697
Nigel Short ENG 2690
Alexander Onischuk 2688
Michele Godena ITA 2551
Elo average : 2694,4 – Cat. XVIII
Tournament Director : Roberto Mogranzini
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