Alexander Morozevich won the Tal Memorial blitz tournament on Thursday afternoon in Moscow. The Russian grandmaster edged out Magnus Carlsen on tiebreak (more games with black) after both players finished on 6.5/9. The tournament was held instead of a drawing of lots, and determined the draw numbers for the players at the Tal Memorial which starts on Friday.

Morozevich vs Carlsen (1-0) today in Moscow | All photos by Eteri Kublashvil & Vladimir Barsky courtesy of the Russian Chess Federation

The 7th Mikhail Tal Memorial was opened on Thursday afternoon and started with a blitz tournament, a novelty introduced by the Russian Chess Federation this year, to determine the draw numbers for the players. It was a 9-round blitz tournament between all ten participants, according to the round robin system. The time control was 3 minutes and 2 seconds increment per game. The drawing of lots for this tournament was fixed, and followed the ratings of the players. Here are all games for replay:

PGN file

Tal Memorial Blitz 2012 | Final standings

In case of a tie, the following tiebreaks were used in descending order (the same as in the main tournament):

1. Highest number of games played with Black
2. Highest number of wins
3. Direct encounter
4. Koya system
5. Sonneborn-Berger coefficient

Based on this, Alexander Morozevich was declared the winner of the tournament, and got start number 1 for the main tournament. He also won the 5,000 Euro first prize, while Magnus Carsen got the 3,000 Euro second prize. Morozevich in fact also beat Carlsen (on time) in their mutual game.

The tournament was broadcast online including video streams of the playing hall. Similar to the World Blitz Championship, which was held after the 2010 Tal Memorial, the players were sitting on a small, round stage and five of these small stages were put up in the hall. This way a lot of spectators could get more than a glimpse of what was happening on the boards.

The live video also revealed something that is unavoidable at such events: a number of games were not saved correctly into PGN. Especially when players are starting to play really fast, and pieces tumble over,   sometimes the software just cannot understand what's happening and stops registering the remainder of the game.

The top 5 players in the final standings of this blitz event earned 5 games with the white pieces in the main event, and 4 blacks. It remains to be seen whether this will be a big advantage, because the first tiebreak rule is the number of games with black...

Below we give the full schedule and pairings. The rest days are on the 11th and 15th of June. More information on the Tal Memorial can be found here.

Tal Memorial 2012 | Schedule & pairings

Chief arbiter Andrzej Filipowicz of Poland explaining the rules

Levon Aronian (Armenia)

Magnus Carlsen (Norway)

Alexander Grischuk (Russia)

Vladimir Kramnik (Russia)

Luke McShane (England)

Alexander Morozevich (Russia)

Hikaru Nakamura (USA)

Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan)

Evgeny Tomashevsky (Russia)

Among the spectators: Arkadij Dvorkovich, who very recently was appointed as Deputy Prime Minister in Dmitry Medvedev's Cabinet... 

...and the oldest living GM, Yuri Averbakh

Another distinguished spectator: Sergey Karjakin (Russia), not playing the Tal Memorial this year

Ian Nepomniachtchi and Magnus Carlsen chatting

The view from the Pashkov House, with the Kremlin on the left