2011 Amber Tournament begins

The 20th Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament will take place at the Monte-Carlo Bay Hotel & Resort in Monaco, from March 11 to 24, 2011. The organizers have assembled a very strong and interesting field, Anand , Carlsen, Kramnik, Ivancuk , Aronian are the top five seeds.

Nakamura, winner of the recent Tata Steel super tournament as well as a host of other super GMs rounded up by the up-and-coming Anish Giri.

No.	Name	Title	FED	Elo
1	Anand, Viswanathan	GM	IND	2817
2	Carlsen, Magnus	GM	NOR	2815
3	Aronian, Levon	GM	ARM	2808
4	Kramnik, Vladimir	GM	RUS	2785
5	Ivanchuk, Vassily	GM	UKR	2779
6	Karjakin, Sergey	GM	RUS	2776
7	Topalov, Veselin	GM	BUL	2775
8	Nakamura, Hikaru	GM	USA	2774
9	Grischuk, Alexander	GM	RUS	2747
10	Gashimov, Vugar	GM	AZE	2746
11	Gelfand, Boris	GM	ISR	2733
12	Giri, Anish	GM	NED	2690

Amber is different from other tournaments in that it consists of both a blindfold and a rapid event. The twelve players play one blindfold and one rapid game with each other participant. Those not used to playing this format might be at a disadvantage and this includes Nakamura and Giri. Anand, Kramnik, Ivancuk and Aronian are all veterans at this event and I expect one of them to win it.

Round 1 games starts today. One unusual thing I noticed is that the games are staggered. Nakamura, Carlsen, Aronian , Giri, Ivancuk and Gashimov starts their first blindfold games at 2:30 PM but the rest starts at 4:00 PM. I guess this gives spectators a better chance to follow all the games. Nice touch and I like this.

There are two games per day. The blindfold will be followed rapidly by the rapids :) Not much rest for the players but they are well paid for it, so they cannot complain. The total prize-fund is a cool € 227,000 (around RM958,000). That's Euros, ladies and gentleman. Now who says chess is not a rewarding game monetary wise?