Hello everyone and welcome to the live coverage of the opening ceremony of the 2015 FIDE Chess World Cup in Baku. We will be following for you the latest developments from the World Cup with minute by minute updates, video, photos, interviews and more.
This will be a continuously updated article for the next 24 hours. Updates will be published every 10-15 minutes, bringing you the latest from the playing hall and the venue.
The updates are published in reverse chronological order.
Note: opening ceremony start at 17:00 CET
20:40 CET
During the technical meeting Chairman of the Anti-Cheating Committee Israel Gelfer explained the anti-cheating rules, FIDE reports.
Peter Leko asked if draws are allowed, ie if there is a requirement on the number of moves. The Chief Arbiter replied there are no restrictions regarding the draw offers.
18:55 CET
Susan Polgar informed on the arrival of two players, “Ray Robson finally arrived after big delay due to Lufthansa strike. Liem Le is due at around 2 am”
18:30 CET
We are now trying to find out exactly how many players are still missing due to the travel problems cause by the Lufthansa strike (details). Stay tuned for info in the coming updates.
18:00 CET
For those who missed the opening ceremony, here is a short summary of it (photos are coming soon). The opening ceremony followed a rather standard scenario. Besides the speeches of high profile officials, including the Deputy Minister of Youth and Sports Intigam Babayev and the President of the Azerbaijan Chess Federation Dr. Elman Rustamov, a video on the development of chess in Azerbaijan was broadcast.
Despite chess not being present in the European Games in Baku, FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov praised Azerbaijan for the organization and confirmed he was present in Baku for the event. Ilyumzhinov also praised the State program for development of chess and expressed his desire the World Cup to be a step towards well organized Chess Olympiad 2016.
17:30 CET
Board colors drawn at the opening ceremony: players with odd numbers will start their matches with white. This means that Topalov, Wesley So, Aronian, Caruana start with white, while Nakamura, Giri, Kramnik are with black in game 1.
17:25 CET
The big news of the day is the unprecedented arrival of Armenian players in Azerbaijan. They were met with respect and all is going normal. Levon Aronian shared for local media, “I want to perform as well as possible at the World Cup in Baku. We expect a very strong tournament, which brings together the strongest chess players of the planet. Among my main rivals for the World Cup I see also Azerbaijani players as Radjabov and Mamedyarov.” Aronian also added, “My friends told me many good things about the Azerbaijani capital, if I have time I will visit the city center”
17:15 CET
And this is the official video of the Baku FIDE World Chess Cup that we will be seeing a lot in this month of September.