exd5!

05.11.2009
– The annual Tal Memorial starts on Thursday, November 5th and ends on November
14th. At category 21 (average Elo 2764) it is one of the strongest of all time
and includes Anand, Carlsen, Kramnik and Aronian. After this the World Blitz
Championship will be held. We will be broadcasting the moves from Moscow live
on Playchess, which soon celebrates a
remarkable anniversary. Tournament details.

Tal Memorial 2009

The Tal Memorial, which will take place from November 4th to 19th, is the strongest
tournament of the year, and at category 21 (average Elo 2764) one of the strongest
of all time. It is a ten-player round robin with classical time controls. The
first four games take place in the National Hotel (Mokhovaya Street D15), the
last five in the mall GUM (Red Square 3). The games start at 15:00h local Moscow
time, which is 13:00h EST (Berlin, Paris), 12:00h London, 7:00 a.m. New York,
5:30 p.m. New Delhi, 11:00 p.m. Sydney. You can find the exact starting time
at your location here.
The World Blitz Championship (see below) takes part after the main event, from
November 16-18 2009 in GUM.

Venue of the second half of the Tal Memorial 2009 and the World Blitz Champion:
the department store "Glavnyi Universalnyi Magazin" or GUM (pronounced
"goom") on the Red Square in Moscow [Photo Wikipedia]

Participants of the Tal Memorial

WRn	Player	Nat.	Rtng	DoB
2	Magnus Carlsen	NOR	2801	1990
3	Viswanathan Anand	IND	2788	1969
4	Levon Aronian	ARM	2786	1982
5	Vladimir Kramnik	RUS	2772	1975
7	Boris Gelfand	ISR	2758	1968
8	Peter Svidler	RUS	2754	1976
9	Peter Leko	HUN	2752	1979
10	Alexander Morozevich	RUS	2750	1977
12	Vassily Ivanchuk	UKR	2739	1969
13	Ruslan Ponomariov	UKR	2739	1983
Category XXI – Average Elo 2763.9

World Blitz Championship

This will be held on November 16, 17 and 18 in the showroom of GUM. A total
of 22 grandmaster will take part. They include the ten participants of the Tal
Memorial, plus the following players:

Live broadcast on Playchess

The games of the Tal Memorial and, if they are available, of the World Blitz
Championship, will be broadcast live on the Playchess
server, which during the event is expected to celebrate an impressive anniversary:
400 million games played online – you better believe it. Currently the
number is 397,280,837 games (at 00:00h on November 5th 2008). The player with
the most games is a member who created his account in 2004 and has played 199,404
games. Come to think he will celebrate an anniversary soon too...

Schedule and results

Links Official tournament site (in Russian) All games in PGN The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download the free PGN reader ChessBase Light, which gives you immediate access. You can also use the program to read, replay and analyse PGN games. New and enhanced: CB Light 2009!

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