In the first round of the NH Chess Tournament, the Rising Stars team made their intentions clear, and the Experience team is warned. All "legends" were playing with the white pieces today, and three of them suffered losses: Korchnoi-Stellwagen 0-1, Jussupow-Caruana 0-1 and Ljubojevic-Wang Yue 0-1. Both Bareev-L'Ami and Agdestein-Cheparinov ended in a draw.

The third NH Chess tournament takes place August 20-30. The venue of this clash between ?¢‚ǨÀúRising Stars' and ?¢‚ǨÀúExperience' is the NH Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky in the centre of Amsterdam.

The Experience team consists of Evgeny Bareev (Russia, 2655), Viktor Korchnoi (Switzerland, 2602), Artur Jussupow (Germany, 2587), Simen Agdestein (Norway, 2583) and Ljubomir Ljubojevic (Serbia, 2555).

The Rising Stars team consists of Wang Yue (China, 2704), Ivan Cheparinov (Bulgaria, 2687), Fabiano Caruana (Italy, 2630), Daniel Stellwagen (The Netherlands, 2616) and Erwin L'Ami (The Netherlands, 2610).

They play a ?¢‚ǨÀúScheveningen' tournament, which means that each player of one team plays against each of the players of the other team. They do so twice, once with the white pieces and once with the black pieces. Members of the Rising Stars team may be most interested in the special prize available to them - the player with the highest score gets an invitation to the prestigious 2009 Amber Rapid and Blindfold tournament in Nice.

The rounds start at 13.30 (except for the last round on August 30, which starts at noon; August 25 is a free day) and every day there is expert commentary for the public (admission is free!).

Here are the games of the first round:

In Amsterdam, both Macauley Peterson and me (Peter Doggers) will be making videos each day for the tournament website. They will also appear on ChessVibes:

Links:

• Official website
• Games in PGN