Dos Hermanas heading for the finals

In the Dos Hermanas internet tournament on ICC there haven’t been any surprises yet. Most top players, with the exception of Ivan Cheparinov and Ian Nepomniachtchi, have qualified. Among those players are: GM Hikaru Nakamura, GM Tigran Petrosian, GM Shahriyar Mamedyarov, GM Zhang Zhong, GM Gata Kamsky and GM Daniel Fridman. They might get good company tonight, as it looks like Magnus Carlsen, probably right from his hotel room in Monaco (where he enjoys a restday), will play one of the final qualifiers tonight!

Kamsky needed a couple of qualifiers but in the end managed to win the eighth of twelve qualifiers, thus guaranteeing a spot in the finals. “I am still rusty”, was the reason he gave on the ICC chat channel. This year cheaters don’t seem to be the big threat for this event; this time the trouble comes from the massive amount of people that want to play, sometimes making the pairing bot to overload. Because of this, three qualifiers had to be ended early (especially the seventh suffered, only seven of the twelve rounds were played).

It looks like all is set up for a great weekend of online chess with lots of excitement. The finals will be played at 20h00 CET (moving from 32 to 8 players) on Friday night and the quarterfinal, semifinal and final will be played on Saturday, starting at 20h00 CET. If you want to check these out but you do not have an ICC account, you can create one here for free.

Here a game between two of the great ICC players: Nakamura with White against Mamedyarov with Black.