Σκακιστικά νέα

The 11th American Continental Chess Championship is taking place from 28th May to 5th June, 2016, at the CIFCO in San Salvador, El Salvador.

The tournament format is 11-round Swiss and top four finishers will qualify for the 2017 FIDE World Cup. Top prizes are USD 5000/3400/2400/1700/1200/900 etc

The preliminary list has 79 players from 16 federations, including 14 Grandmasters and 12 International Masters.

Representatives of the UK newspaper The Telegraph have confirmed that President of the Russian Chess Federation and Vice-President of FIDE Andrey Filatov is not associated with Telecom Ltd Express, a company mentioned in the article Chess Drawn in the Panama Papers Scandal, and apologized for the error.

The Drancy Chess Club organizes the 2016 edition of the Top 12 French Team Chess Championship. The tournament is going to take place 27 May – 7 June at a magnificent place: a castle in the middle of a park, downtown Drancy.

All games will be live with computer analysis daily on Chessdom.com. Round 1 starts May 28th at 15:00 CET. Scroll down for live commentary by GM Yannick Gozzoli, GM Manuel Apizella, and GM Adrien Demuth.

The 35th Zalakaros Chess Festival is taking place from 27th May to 4th June, 2016, in Zalakaros, a town in Hungary, famous for its thermal bath.

The event is organized by the Hungarian Chess Federation and Zalakaros City Council, under the patronage of Mr. Tamás Seszták, President of the Hungarian Chess Federation, and Mr. Ferenc Novák, Mayor of Zalakaros.

TrustNordisk has struck multiple Cannes deals for the Norwegian documentary about chess world champion Magnus Carlsen.

Arrow Films has picked up UK and Ireland rights for Benjamin Ree’s Norwegian documentary Magnus.

The deal was struck in Cannes with Scandinavian sales agent TrustNordisk, who also closed a deal with Pretty Pictures for France.

The preliminary Stage 1b of the strongest computer chess championship in history TCEC started this May 26th. A total of 16 engines will fight for 8 qualification spots, to determine who will join the winners of Stage 1a.

The Spanish Chess Federation is saddened to inform that the legendary Grandmaster Arturo Pomar Salamanca passed away at the age 84 after a long ilness.

Born in 1931 in Palma de Mallorca, Pomar excelled in chess at the early age and was considered a child prodigy in the 1940s.

At the age of 13 he drew the reigning world champion Alexander Alekhine in a standard game, this still being a record. He was awarded the IM title in 1950 and GM title in 1962.

The Swedish Chess Academy and Swedish Chess Federation will hold the social project “The Swedish industry meets suburbs” on 3rd June in Stockholm.

- “This initiative is an effort of inclusion of ethnic minorities in Sweden through chess”, says GM Pontus Carlsson, the main organizer for the event.

Chess benefits millions because of its widespread appeal to all regardless the social background.

The Uzbekistan Chess Federation on behalf of Asian Chess Federation and FIDE, invites your Federation to participate in the Asian Continental Chess Championships (Open and Women’s) from 25 May – 5 June 2016 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Each Federation from FIDE Zones 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6 and 3.7 can enter one official player in the Open and one official player in the Women’s Division.

The opening ceremony of the 3rd Vugar Gashimov Memorial took place on 25th May in Shamkir, Azerbaijan.