The 2nd Nanjing Pearl Spring Chess Tournament takes place 27th Sept - 9th October 2009 in Nanjing, China. The total prize fund is $365,000 (250,000 Euros) and event is part of the Grand Slam series, with the winner getting an automatic seat into next year’s Grand Slam Masters Final.
The line-up (in rating order) for the 6-player double round robin will be: Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria), Magnus Carlsen (Norway), Peter Leko (Hungary), Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan), Dmitry Jakovenko (Russia), Wang Yue (China). The average rating is 2763, which makes the event a category 21 tournament.
Norwegian teen ace Carlsen, who recent announced he's being trained by Garry Kasparov, got off to a blistering Kasparov-like start. After beating Leko in the opening round, he then proceeded to beat-up on world #1 and top seed Topalov. His winning run was halted though by Wang Yue, who managed to hold the draw in round three.
And you can follow Carlsen's progress here on ICC as he looks to take his first outright win in a super-tournament, with live coverage of the games from Nanjing starting each day at 03:00am ET (15:00 local time). And for each round the Chess.FM grandmaster team will bring us their spin of the best of the day's play with Game of the Day from Nanjing - the first three of which featuring Carlsen! GOTD is a member-only service here on ICC; but for non-members we will have a free 5 min preview of each GOTD also. To upgrade to view in full (and all our other Chess.FM videos and regular weekly shows), join ICC today!
Official site (In English): http://www.chess-pearlspring.com/www/chess_pk/2009/en/
Magnus Force in China
