The fourth Kings Tournament takes off on Sunday with the opening ceremony and on Monday with the first round. This year Carlsen, Gelfand, Nisipeanu, Ponomariov, Radjabov and Wang Yue play in Medias, Romania and ChessVibes will be there too!

The fourth edition of the Kings Tournament will take place June 14-25 in Medias, Romania. Again it's organized by Romgaz and the Chess Club Society "Elisabeta Polihroniade”. This year the tournament is officially part of the Grand Slam, substituting the cancelled MTel Masters.

Against it's a 6-player, double round-robin with a rest day after five rounds. Venue is the brand new Romgaz Center in Medias (near Bazna). The rate of play is 2 hours for the first 40 moves, one hour for the next 20 moves and then 15 minutes plus an increment of 30 seconds per move.

No draw agreement by the players are allowed before move 30. Any such draw claim will be permitted only through the Chief Arbiter in the case of a triple-repetition of the position, a perpetual check or a theoretically drawn position.

Norwegian GM and world's number 1 Magnus Carlsen is, not surprisingly, top seed. Last year's winner Vassily Ivanchuk is playing the Capablanca Memorial in Cuba and was been replaced by his fellow countryman, the ex-FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov. The other participants are the 2009 World Cup winner Boris Gelfand, the best Chinese player Wang Yue, Azerbaijan's number two Teimour Radjabov and the best Romanian player Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu. Together they create an average rating of 2742.

ChessVibes will be at the tournament from start to finish, providing videos for the official website and thus having the opportunity to bring on-the-spot reports from Medias, Romania. Don't miss it!