Chess Classic & Open
GRENKE Chess Open starts with almost 1500 players
A new record for the GRENKE Chess OPEN: 1482 players found their way to the Schwarzwaldhalle in Karlsruhe to play the biggest open chess tournament in Europe. We counted 787 players in the A_Open, almost 300 of them are titled players. 528 players have registered for the B-Open, and in the C-Open 169 chess lovers play their games during Easter. Before the start of the first round, tournament director Sven Noppes opened the Chess Open and invited the 10 players of the GRENKE Classic on stage for the draw of their event, starting on Saturday, 30 March. Many chess fans are delighted to see the clash between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana in the first round! .
Photo: Eric van Reem
Right at the start of the supertournament we will see the first warm-up game between world champion Magnus Carlsen and challenger Fabiano Caruana.
A smiling Sven Noppes seems to know what will happen next | Photo: Georgios Souleidis
The Norwegian chess journalist Tarjei J. Svensen posted on Twitter: „This is remarkable! The FOURTH (!) closed tournament in a row where Carlsen and Caruana face eachother in round 1: St. Louis, London, Wijk aan Zee, and now Karlsruhe. What are the odds?“ It did not take long, before another Twitter user calculated the odds: „1 in 9477, or 0.0105518624%“.
You can check the GRENKE Chess Classic pairings here.
At the GRENKE Chess Open 52 Grandmasters and almost 300 titled players battle for a part of the 54.000 Euro prize fund. The winner will get a nice part of the cake: 15.000 Euro and he or she will be invited for the GRENKE Chess Classic 2019. The favorites are four Grandmasters with a 2700+ rating: Frenchman Etienne Bacrot has the highest rating, just before Richard Rapport (Hungary), Hao Wang (China) and Dmitry Andreikin (Russia).
Etienne Bacrot | Photo: Georgios Souleidis
From a German point of view it will be interesting to see how Daniel Fridman will fare, the number 9 seed of the event. He arrived with his wife Anna Zatonskih (USA), who is the clear favorite for the first prize of 2500 Euro in the women’s section.
Anna Zatonskih | Photo: Georgios Souleidis
The first round started with two major surprises. Rustam Kasimdhzanov (Uzbekistan), the second of Fabiano Caruana who just won the Candidates Tournament in Berlin, lost his game against Pascal Karsay, the 17-year old rated 2148, the number 399 seed of the GRENKE Open. Hao Wang had to be happy with a draw in his game against Johannes Bathray from Böblingen, the number 397 seed with a 2148 rating. Another surprise: Frenchman Thomas Duchateau made a draw against Grandmaster Vladimir Burmakin.
The second round of the GRENKE Chess Open starts on Good Friday at 09.00 AM. Unfortunately we are not allowed to broadcast the games live on this nationwide public holiday. We will provide information about the games on our social media channels and on this website.
Text: Georgios Souleidis
Translation: Eric van Reem