2009 FIDE Grand Prix - Nalchik, Russia
April 14th - April 30th

This message has been edited. Last edited by: KHollister,

Player Standings



Official Site

You can download the games here.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: KHollister,

You can read all about the Grand Prix here.


1st Grand Prix tournament in Baku, Azerbaijan
2nd Grand Prix tournament in Sochi, Russia
3rd Grand Prix tournament in Elista, Russia


Overall Grand Prix standings:



Several changes were made to the Grand Prix and the whole World Championship cycle. Read more about it here.

Here is a live video stream from Nalchik at: http://62.183.81.194/



You can see GM's walking around a lot during their games.

Karjakin wants to represent Russia in the future.
http://www.chessdom.com/news-2...ges-chess-federation

Ukrainian chess federation is clearly unhappy.



According to FIDE regulations, at least 10 months from official notification date muss pass, before he can play at FIDE events under the new flag.
http://ratings.fide.com/fedchange.phtml

FIDE keeps track of transfers between federations since year 2000. Some players changed their federation several times. Interestingly in 2003 Aronian transfered from Armenian federation to German federation, but in 2004 he went back to native Armenia.

Grischuk is leading into the first rest day with 3.5/5. Half a pint behind are Karjakin, Leko, Aronian and Alekseev. Biggest disapointment is always unpredictable Ivanchuk, who occupies the last spot with 1.5 points.


After this tournament, Grischuk will be the first player to complete his Grand Prix campaign (4 tournaments). Only best three result count towards the GP total, meaning that the worst result will be discarded. Grichuk needs to score at least 105 points (clear 5th place or better) to overtake Radjabov in the overall GP standings. But of course Radjabov would then have a chance to improve his overall score in his last tournament by improving his worst performance - 60 points from Baku (see the table above)

I think over 400 points will be necessarry for 1st and 2nd place, so Grischuk goal should be at least place 2. If he is clear 2nd (=150 points), he will have 408,33 points in total. But even that is no guarantee for 1st or 2nd place overall.

Best two from the Grand Prix will qualify for the Candidates tournament.

Alekseev and Aronian are leading before the last section. Half a point behing they are followed by Leko, Svidler and Bacrot. Further half point behind are Karjakin, Grischuk, Akopian and Eljanov. These 9 players still have a realistic chance to win the tournament.

Aronian wins against previous co-leader Leko to win the tournament. Leko and Akopian (who started with 0.5/3) share the 2nd place. Grischuk finished shared 4th and receives 105 GP points, meaning that he is now leading the GP standings together with Radjabov. But Radjabov (and others) can still improve their score in next tournaments. The real "leader" in GP standings is Aronian who has maximum 360 points from just two tournaments! I think there is very little doubt that he will win the overall GP series and qualify for the Candidates.
Kamsky, Svidler, Karjakin and Cheparinov have no chance to reach the 2nd place overall and qualify for the Candidates.

The winner




Grand Prix standings:

Only best 3 results count towards total score.


Like already said, first two qualify for next year's Candidates. Unless Aronian completely brakes down, he will win the Grand Prix series. 2nd place is momentarly eyed-in by Radjabov, Wang Yue and Gashimov, but Jakovenko, Leko and Akopian can still join the fight. Others (including current co-leader Grischuk) only have theoretical chances to qualify, or not even that (Kamsky, Svidler, Karjakin and Cheparinov are out of the race)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: ebutaljib,

I would like to point out to the videos from Nalchik

http://nalchik2009.fide.com/video-gallery/index.php

They were extremelly well made by Peter Doggers (the guy who runs ChessVibes). Hopefully he will made them in the future tournaments too. Also the players are very cooperative, not like in Topalov vs. Kamsky match.