Two top events start today

After a quiet week, today two top events start. In Foros (Ukraine) it’s time for the annual Aerosvit tournament and in Yerevan (Armenia) a strong rapid tourney takes place.

The international chess tournament “AEROSVIT-2008″ will be held June 8-19 in the city of Foros, Crimea, Ukraine. It’s a twelve-player round-robin with the well-known rate of play of 90 minutes for the first 40 moves and then 30 minutes for the rest including 30 seconds increment from move one.

Again the tournament is sponsored by the Ukrainian airline company and with their help the organizers got together a field with an average rating of 2711,7 - an absolute top event. Here’s the impressive list of participants:

1. Carlsen, Magnus g NOR 2765 2. Svidler, Peter g RUS 2746 3. Ivanchuk, Vassily g UKR 2740 4. Shirov, Alexei g ESP 2740 5. Karjakin, Sergey g UKR 2732 6. Jakovenko, Dmitry g RUS 2711 7. Alekseev, Evgeny g RUS 2711 8. Eljanov, Pavel g UKR 2687 9. Volokitin, Andrei g UKR 2684 10. Nisipeanu, Liviu-Dieter g ROU 2684 11. Van Wely, Loek g NED 2676 12. Onischuk, Alexander g USA 2664

Not just a very strong list (with Magnus Carlsen top seeded for the second time in his career - now we’ll stop counting) but also a nice mixture of some “solid lads” (Carlsen, Svidler, Eljanov) and some fierce fighters (Shirov, Volokitin, Van Wely). This tournament will surely be one of the most interesting events of the year. Needless to say, ChessVibes cover the event as much as possible.

Pairings first round:

Van Wely, Loek - Shirov, Alexei
Eljanov, Pavel - Svidler, Peter
Carlsen, Magnus - Ivanchuk, Vassily
Alekseev, Evgeny - Karjakin, Sergey
Nisipeanu, Liviu-Dieter - Volokitin, Andrei
Onischuk, Alexander - Jakovenko, Dmitry

The games start at 15:00 hrs local time (that’s 14:00 hrs CET).

A view of beautiful Foros, a resort town close to the more known Yalta

1. Morozevich, Alexander g RUS 2774 2. Aronian, Levon g ARM 2763 3. Leko, Peter g HUN 2741 4. Adams, Michael g ENG 2723 5. Gelfand, Boris g ISR 2723 6. Bu Xiangzhi g CHN 2708 7. Akopian, Vladimir g ARM 2643 8. Sargissian, Gabriel g ARM 2643

Of course we will follow and cover this tourney as well!

Statue of David of Sasun, Yerevan