Interesting facts on the Amber tournament

- The tournament is sponsored by Joop van Oosterom. It is named after his daughter Amber Melody. Oosterom himself is a world champion in correspondence chess.

- van Oosterom is a billionaire and when you have so much money that you do not know what to do with, what better than to finance a tournament where the best players in the world will compete with each other for the best prizes and the best playing conditions ever?

- This is the 19th edition of the Amber Rapid and Blindfold Chess Tournament

- The players play two blindfold games and two rapid games. Actually they do not play blindfolded but there is computer screen with a blank chessboard where they enter their moves.

- Vladimir Kramnik has won this tournament six times either clear or shared first. When he did not win, he shared second.

- Kramnik liked blindfold so much, he actually considered asking the organizers to allow him to play the rapid games blindfold as well (!).

- Ponomariov and Gashimov had never played blindfold before. Both won their first blindfold game.

- Carlsen opened his first blindfold game with Ivanchuk with 1. a3 (he lost when he blundered a piece)

- Grischuk is well known for getting into time trouble in all his games. He managed to beat Kramnik in 43 moves in their first blindfold game, his last 25 moves were all made in time trouble!