Tata Steel Super Tour

The tournament used to be called "Corus", but In 2006 the steel company sponsoring the event was taken over (for $7.6 billion) by the Indian company Tata Steel, hence the name change. To chess fans the name is linked to the Dutch seaside town Wijk aan Zee, where the event takes place from January 15 to 30.



Website

WWCC 2010

The Women's World Chess Championship is being held at Hatay, Turkey, from December 2nd to 25th. It is a 64-player knockout tournament, with two-game mini-matches qualifying a player to the next round, until the final and 6th round, which is a four-game match to determine the champion. In the event of a draw after the two tournament time-control games, there will be a rapid game tie-breaker, followed by a possible blitz playoff, and finally an armageddon blitz game. The time control is 90 minutes for 40 moves, followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game, and a 30-second increment per move as of the first move.

The question is ,will Hou Yifan become the youngest WC in chess History?My answer is,I believe that she will win this event and thus become WWCC.You heard it here first,
FWCC




Website

London Chess Classic 2010

Viswanathan Anand will become the first reigning world chess champion to play in a major tournament in London since Anatoly Karpov in 1984 when he joins the eight-player field for the second London Chess Classic, which runs from 8-15 December 2010 at the Olympia Conference Centre.













Website

Carlsen Withdraws From Next Cycle

To: FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov & FIDE World Championship Committee.

Reference is made to the ongoing World Championship cycle.

The purpose of this letter is to inform you of my decision not to take part in the planned Candidate Matches between March and May 2011.

After careful consideration I’ve reached the conclusion that the ongoing 2008 - 2012 cycle does not represent a system, sufficiently modern and fair, to provide the motivation I need to go through a lengthy process of preparations and matches and, to perform at my best.

Reigning champion privileges, the long (5 yr) span of the cycle, changes made during the cycle resulting in a new format (Candidates) that no World Champion has had to go through since Kasparov, puzzling ranking criteria as well as the shallow ceaseless match-after-match concept are all less than satisfactory in my opinion.

By providing you with 4 months notice before the earliest start of the Candidates as well as in time before you have presented player contracts or detailed regulations, I rest assured that you will be able to find an appropriate replacement.

Although the purpose of this letter is not to influence you to make further changes to the ongoing cycle, I would like to take the opportunity to present a few ideas about future cycles in line with our input to FIDE during the December 27th 2008 phone-conference between FIDE leaders and a group of top-level players.

In my opinion privileges should in general be abolished and a future World Championship model should be based on a fair fight between the best players in the World, on equal terms. This should apply also to the winner of the previous World Championship, and especially so when there are several players at approximately the same level in the world elite. (Why should one player have one out of two tickets to the final to the detriment of all remaining players in the world? Imagine that the winner of the 2010 Football World Cup would be directly qualified to the 2014 World Cup final while all the rest of the teams would have to fight for the other spot.)

One possibility for future cycles would be to stage an 8-10 player World Championship tournament similar to the 2005 and 2007 events.

The proposal to abolish the privileges of the World Champion in the future is not in any way meant as criticism of, or an attack on, the reigning World Champion Viswanathan Anand, who is a worthy World Champion, a role model chess colleague and a highly esteemed opponent.

Rest assured that I am still motivated to play competitive chess. My current plan is to continue to participate in well-organised top-level tournaments and to try to maintain the no 1 spot on the rating list that I have successfully defended for most of 2010.

Best regards,

IGM Magnus Carlsen

Tal Memorial 2010

The Tal Memorial and World Blitz takes place 4th-18th November 2010. Players: Kramnik, Grischuk, Karjakin, Aronian, Gelfand, Shirov, Eljanov, Nakamura, Wang Hao and Mamedyarov. It is followed by the World Blitz Championships with the same format as last year: 22 participants in playing a double round robin which will include Carlsen and Svidler in addition to the players in the main event.








Website

39th Chess Olympiad Khanty-Mansiysk 2010

The 39th Chess Olympiad takes place in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia 21st September (Round 1) - 3rd October (11th Round) 2010.

Website

Raw World Chess Challenge

The RAW World Chess Challenge takes place at the Cooper Star Hotel in New York City in New York City on Friday September 10th 2010. The challenge see Carlsen take on registered viewers from throughout the world, they will receive help from Maxime Vachier-Lagrave from France, Hikaru Nakamura from the United States and Judit Polgar from Hungary who will suggest moves that will be voted on. The event is just one day but is similar to the hugely successful Kasparov versus the World in 1999. Kasparov will also be on hand as an Ambassador for this match.


Official Site