Get Ready for Sunway Sitges International Chess Festival 2018!
Sunway Sitges International Chess Festival is slated to be held in Sitges, Barcelona, Spain from the 13th to the 23rd of December 2018. The event boasts of being one of the strongest open events in the chess world, headlined this year by the Russian grandmaster, GM Dmitry Andreikin as the top seed and includes a long list of strong participants in the fray. Interesting participants include the brilliant Vassily Ivanchuk and prodigious Nihal Sarin and R. Praggnanandhaa. Read this curtain raiser by Rupali Mullick to find out more about this upcoming event.
The 5th edition of the Sunway Sitges International Chess Festival will be held in Sitges, Barcelona, Spain from the 13th to the 23rd of December 2018 at the Hotel Playa Golf Sitges. The open event will be held in 2 groups –
Group A: open to all players with a FIDE rating of at least 1700 ELO.
Group B: open to players with FIDE Rating of below 2000 points and who have not surpassed a rating of 2100 FIDE’s ELO points in the last 3 years.
The total prize fund for this tournament is ~Rs. 21,80,000 (i.e. 27,155 €) with a prize money of Rs. 4,00,000 for the Group A title winner. Besides, there are also various other category prizes. The tournament will be a 10 round Swiss league which will be played over a ten-day schedule.
So far, 162 players from 39 federations have confirmed their entries for the Group A tournament which include 104 titled players (31 GM, 27 IM, 4 WGM, 4 WIM, 20 FM, 2 WFM, 15 CM, 1 WCM). The top seed of the event is Super GM Dmitry Andreikin with an elo of 2719 followed by the evergreen GM Vassily Ivanchuk. The Rating average for this group is 2239! It will, therefore, be a great opportunity for norm seekers to get their IM/GM norms.
Players list
See the complete player list here
The venue Hotel Sunway Playa Golf Sitges is the official hotel of the Sunway Chess festival. It is situated in a scenic location on the beach. Players are given the Sunway apartments for stay and the organizers also provide the visiting players bicycles for the entire duration of the tournament. Riding the bicycle on beach side every day is always a refreshing experience before and after the games. Here is small clip filmed by Atul Dahale during his visit to the event:
A total of 92 players from 23 federations have enrolled in the Group B Open, with an average rating of 1637. This will serve as a great opportunity for players with rating less than 1700 ELO to gain international exposure and some ELO points!.
See the complete player list for group B here
Apart from the Open tournaments, there will also be a Night blitz tournament and a Junior Blitz tournament and some Simultaneous games sessions with GMs!
ChessBase India has always done some interesting coverage on the Sunway Sitges event. We have had authors like Atul Dahale, Sushir Lohia, Chessbase India Juniors editor-in-chief Avathanshu Bhat and ChessBase India's Business Development manager Supriya Bhat present at the venue in the prior editions. They brought us exciting reports from the beginning and closing of the event and a lot of amazing pictures. Below are some memorable pictures:
Previous reports on the event:
Sunway Sitges 2016 by Atul Dahale
Sunway International - the most scenic place to play chess by Sushir Lohia
Sunway Sitges 2017 (A) by Avathanshu Bhat
Sunway Sitges 2017 (B) by Avanthanshu Bhat
To know more about this upcoming Sunway Sitges International Chess Festival, please visit http://www.sunwaychessfestival.com/
About the Author:
Rupali Mullick is the mother of the current Commonwealth U-10 champion Raahil Mullick. She l has a Ph.D in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a partner at JVM Industries. Her husband Prashant is a FIDE Rated player making them a complete chess family.
Rupali is also an excellent interviewer and has done some wonderful interviews with some of the budding Indian talents in the past:
