The traditional Gibraltar Chess Festival is going to take place 21-31 January, 2013. Seven players from the 2700 club are headliners in this year’s event. Top seeded is Vassily Ivanchuk, who won the 2011 Gibraltar Masters with 9,0/10 with a rating performance of 2968. His main competitors are the heroes of Gibtelecom 2010, Gata Kamsky and Michael Adams. Back then Kamsky scored an impressive and unbeaten 7½/10 in the Gibraltar Masters with a TPR of 2719 to finish shared first, while Adams won the title after tiebreaks.

The other participants from the 2700 club will be Anand’s second and winner of the 2011 Gyorgy Marx memorial Radoslaw Wojtaszek, the top French player and recent winner of European Blitz Chess Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, the legendary Alexei Shirov, and the number-one ranked player in Vietnam and the 39th strongest active player in the world Le Quang Liem.

A total of 233 players are going to play in the Masters group together with the 2700+ ELO favorites. Among them 14 are above 2600 ELO, 22 are above 2500 ELO, and 106 players are titled.

Scroll down for the full participants list. At Chessdom.com we will have several detailed players previews in the coming days, plus you can always enjoy the live games with analysis here.

There are multiple side events at the Gibraltar Chess Festival 2013. Among them are 5 morning tournaments, amateur events, and seminars.

American International Master and Women’s Grandmaster Anna Zatonskih has confirmed that she will give a Masterclass during the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival in January. Her Masterclass in 2012 was very well received. Watch it here!

In it she showed several games and problems – including an extremely difficult mate in one! The organisers are delighted that Anna has agreed to give a new Masterclass for players and guests at the 2013 festival. The photo shows Anna at the 2010 festival.

More side events at the official website

2013 Gibraltar Tradewise Chess participants

1 g Ivanchuk, Vassily UKR 2758 
2 g Kamsky, Gata USA 2740 
3 g Adams, Michael ENG 2725 
4 g Wojtaszek, Radoslaw POL 2723 
5 g Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime FRA 2711 
6 g Shirov, Alexei LAT 2708 
7 g Le, Quang Liem VIE 2705 
8 g Short, Nigel ENG 2696 
9 g Vitiugov, Nikita RUS 2694 
10 g Yu, Yangyi CHN 2688 
11 g Sutovsky, Emil ISR 2684 
12 g Fridman, Daniel GER 2667 
13 g Iturrizaga, Eduardo VEN 2650 
14 g Tkachiev, Vladislav FRA 2650 
15 g Georgiev, Kiril BUL 2643 
16 g Jones, Gawain C B ENG 2632 
17 g Bartel, Mateusz POL 2629 
18 g Swiercz, Dariusz POL 2627 
19 g Jussupow, Artur GER 2611 
20 g Salgado Lopez, Ivan ESP 2606 
21 g Ehlvest, Jaan USA 2603

Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
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