Chess 960 Internet Championship 2007

GM Tigran L. Petrosyan, ICC Chess960 Champion!

The Internet Chess Club, in conjunction with Chess Tigers, organizers of the popular annual Mainz Chess Classic in Germany, are pleased to announce a stunning success to their Chess960 online qualifiers! All of last week, qualifiers were held on the ICC (and on our new service of World Chess Live), where 959 unique players (1546 in total over 10 events) battled it out for the coveted spots in the 32-player KO final, to be staged 14-15 July on the ICC.

Five players qualified from each of the 6 larger ICC events, 1 from the best cumulative score from all ICC events, and 1 from the 4 smaller WCL events. Of the 32 contesting the finals, 15 are GMs - five being FIDE top 100 players: Gata Kamsky (USA), Krishnan Sasikiran (India), Ivan Sokolov (Netherlands), Kiril Georgiev (Bulgaria) and Mikheil Mchedlishvili (Georgia) - and 11 IMs.

The overall winner will receive a round trip ticket, 600 Euro ($811) cash, hotel room and breakfast at the Hilton Mainz Hotel, by the banks of the Rhine, just 1 block from the picturesque Old Town, from August 15 to 20 (5 nights and 6 days!).

They will also receive an automatic seat into two of the biggest and most prestigious series of rapid chess tournaments in the world, playing alongside many of the game's top grandmasters: the 6th FiNet Open, the world's biggest Chess960 (FischerRandom) tournaments, and the 14th ORDIX Open, one of the strongest rapid tournaments in the world. While there, they will also have the best seats in the house for the main evening attraction: Anand, Kazimdzhanov, Aronian and Bacrot will battle it out for the GRENKELEASING Rapid World Championship and the FiNet Chess960 Rapid World Championship.

The final of the last 32 players on the ICC (www.chessclub.com) took place on Saturday, July 14th, 2pm, and the final of the last 8 players took place on Sunday, July 15th, 2pm.

Prize winners

8-player Knockout Finals | Sunday, July 15 | 14:00 EDT

System of play: in the knockout finals, "mini-matches" of four games will be played and if a tie occurs after that, two more games will be played, and so on, until a decision is reached. In the final of the last two, the match will have six games. Again, if the match is tied 3-3, another two games will be played, until there is a winner. Any match in the finals ends before four (six) games are played, if one player has 2.5 points or more (3.5 or more in the final of the last two).

FINAL result

1/2 Final results

1/4 Final results

1/8 Final results

1/16 Final results

Ranking for the 32-player Knockout Finals

Qualifier-1 | Manager: Kiebitz | Saturday, July 7 | 14:00 EDT | 219 players

• Raffle prize winners: mala9, giul and Bega.
• $25 store vouchers: Mateya, SilikonaPub and Chessrascal.
• Standing and Results Qualifier-1.

Qualifier-2 | Manager: Kiebitz | Sunday, July 8 | 14:00 EDT | 255 players

• Raffle prize winners: Cryptochess, VincentVega and adept2u.
• $25 store vouchers: LittleEddie, Otero2006, CAPATROSIAN.
• Standing and Results Qualifier-2.

Qualifier-3 | Manager: Kiebitz | Monday, July 9 | 15:00 EDT | 176 players

• Raffle prize winners: tammany, ben-tova and jasep.
• $25 store vouchers: alifant, littlefoxy and sitparkcin.
• Standing and Results Qualifier-3.

Qualifier-4 | Manager: popejohn | Tuesday, July 10 | 18:00 EDT | 227 players

• Raffle prize winners: Talaris, crisgrossi and livis.
• $25 store vouchers: BENDER, BloodiedStump and Mejvik.
• Standing and Results Qualifier-4.

Qualifier-5 | Manager: MACTEP | Wednesday, July 11 | 17:00 EDT | 240 players

• Raffle prize winners: trikmamak, kkkkk and Jahonas.
• $25 store vouchers: wch, mandragoru and Wiley-Coyote.
• Standing and Results Qualifier-5.

Qualifier-6 | Manager: kicksacan | Thursday, July 12 | 16:00 EDT | 316 players

• Raffle prize winners: UncleZeb, Captain-Courage and Sleete.
• $25 store vouchers: WILSONPESSOA, LordVetinari and Lone-Tiger.
• Standing and Results Qualifier-6.

Other Qualifieds

• Most points over all qualifiers: zdr
• World Chess Live:: TheButcher-Mio.

1. PLAYING SCHEDULE

There will be six qualifiers to the knockout finals. You can play in as many qualifiers as you like. All qualifiers will have 9 rounds, swiss pairings. The games are rated in the Wild category. Latejoining is possible until round 6, but half point byes are only available for the first three rounds.

1. Qualifier 1: Saturday, July 7th, 2pm
2. Qualifier 2: Sunday, July 8th, 2pm
3. Qualifier 3: Monday, July 9th, 3pm
4. Qualifier 4: Tuesday, July 10th, 6pm
5. Qualifier 5: Wednesday, July 11th, 5pm
6. Qualifier 6: Thursday, July 12th, 4pm
7. KO final day-1 : Saturday, July 14th, 2pm
8. KO final day-2: Sunday, July 15th, 2pm
9. PGN ziped file with the Q1-Q6 games

The final of the last 32 players will take place on Saturday, July 14th, 2pm, and the final of the last 8 players will take place on Sunday, July 15th, 2pm.

2. PRIZES

1. 1st prize: Round trip ticket to Mainz + 600 Euros cash + room and breakfast at Hilton Mainz Hotel from August 15-20 and allowed to play BOTH tournaments for free: 6th FiNet Chess960 Open and 14th ORDIX Open.
2. 2nd prize: 400 Euros
3. 3rd/4th prize: 150 Euros each
4. 5th-8th prize: 1 year ICC membership extension
5. 9th-16th prize: 3 months ICC membership extension

Should GM/IMs win membership extensions, they can donate those extensions to other players of their choice. Should the winner be unable to accept the invitation to the Mainz tournament, it will be awarded to the next best player.

Moreover, in EACH qualifier, three 3-month ICC memberships and three $25-vouchers for the ICC store will be raffled amongst all players who finish that qualifier orderly.

Cash prizes will be paid by cheque. Other payment methods require the approval of ICC.

3. TOURNAMENT SYSTEM

The time control will be 3 1 in the whole tournament. The top five players from each of the six qualifiers will advance to the knockout finals. In case of a tie, the usual tiebreaks of Tomato tournaments will apply. They are described in detail in "tell tomato help tie". In addition, one seat will go to the winner of a qualifier held on World Chess Live and another seat will be awarded to the player who scores most points in all six qualifiers on ICC together. In case two or more players reach the same total score over all qualifiers, the player with the best place in his best qualifier advances. The standings in the series of all qualifiers together can be seen by typing: tell pear ser b chess960

Players can take part in as many qualifiers as they want to. In case a player who is already qualified reaches the top five in another qualifier, his seat will be awarded to the next best player.

Finalists will be sorted by the ICC Blitz rating they had when they played their qualifier. The grid will display the following pairings (top to bottom) and qualifiers who go through to the next round will be paired accordingly: 1-32, 16-17, 8-25, 9-24, 4-29, 13-20, 5-28, 12-21, 2-31, 15-18, 7-26, 10-23, 3-30, 17-19, 6-27, 11-22.

In the knockout finals, "mini-matches" of four games will be played and if a tie occurs after that, two more games will be played, and so on, until a decision is reached. In the final of the last two, the match will have six games. Again, if the match is tied 3-3, another two games will be played, until there is a winner. Any match in the finals ends before four (six) games are played, if one player has 2.5 points or more (3.5 or more in the final of the last two).

4. HOW TO TAKE PART

No preregistration is necessary for this tournament. This event is only open to ICC members and to those who sign up for a free trial 7-day membership of the ICC - so don't delay, sign-up here today! Show up about 10 minutes before the scheduled start and type "tell pear join" or click on the entry button in your event list.

Disconnecting before the start will remove you from the tournament. If you disconnect after the start, you will not be removed automatically, but you need to return as soon as possible, or the manager will forfeit you. You can follow the tournament in channel 227. Participants will automatically be placed in this channel.

You need to have an ICC membership to take part in this tournament, or a free trials. You need to use the most recent version of Blitzin or Dasher to play in this tournament. Download here.

5. RULES. How to play Chess960 on the ICC

Chess960 stands for Bobby Fischer's new and improved version of "Randomized Chess". Chess960 uses algebraic notation exclusively. At the start of every game of a Chess960 game, both players Pawns are set up exactly as they are at the start of every game of Classical Chess. In Chess960, just before the start of every game, both players pieces on their respective back rows receive an identical random shuffle decided by the ICC server, which is programmed to set up the pieces in any combination, with the provisos that one Rook has to be to the left and one Rook has to be to the right of the King, and one Bishop has to be on a lightcolored square and one Bishop has to be on a dark-colored square. White and Black have identical positions. From behind their respective Pawns the opponents pieces are facing each other directly, symmetrically. Thus for example, if the server places White's back row pieces in the following position: Ra1, Bb1, Kc1, Nd1, Be1, Nf1, Rg1, Qh1, it will place Black's back row Pieces in the following position, Ra8, Bb8, Kc8, Nd8, Be8, Nf8, Rg8, Qh8, etc.

Chess960 is implemented on ICC and nicknamed Wild 22. The starting position is randomly chosen for each individual game in the tournament.

You are invited to practice Chess960 on ICC in free games. Seek a game of Wild variant 22 or play in the regular Chess960 (Fischer Random) tournament on Tuesdays, 6pm. To play a game of Chess960 on the ICC, type "seek w22" to issue a seek, or "match Fred w22" to offer a game to a specific player (Fred for example).

Castling is basically the same as in regular chess, except the king and rook may start on different squares from regular chess. The king and rook end up on the same squares as in regular chess, for example, c1 and d1, or g1 and f1 for White. All the other usual castling rules apply (you cannot castle out of or into check, squares the king passes over or onto cannot be attacked by the opponent or occupied by pieces, squares the rook passes over or onto cannot be occupied, and you can't have moved the king or rook previously).

A strange example of castling is that if your king and rook start out on b1 and a1, you can castle "queenside" resulting in the king moving to c1 and the rook to d1! But you must make this move by typing "OOO" or "ooo". Moving the king from b1 to c1 will just move the king.

If your king is moving less than two squares when it castles, you must type in the move, "OO" or "oo" for castling to the g/f files, "OOO" or "ooo" for castling to c/d. If the king is moving two squares or more, you can just move the king and the server will know that you intend to castle. (That is, if your graphical interface will let you make that move.)

Note: Versions of BlitzIn prior to 2.5 may not handle the display of castling moves correctly.

6. OTHER RULES

During the tournament, the most recent version of Blitzin or Dasher must be used. A player must not enter the tournament on more than one handle, or risk being forfeited on both handles.

The ICC tournament directors may at their discretion make a ruling on a particular game, eject a player from a tournament, or refuse to allow a player to join a tournament for any reason including but not limited to: failure to show up on time or to start a game on time, concern that the player's internet connection is not reliable enough for the game to finish in a timely manner, suspicion of chess computer use, suspicion that a player is receiving assistance, suspicion that a player has used multiple accounts during the tournament, or the fact that this player has been caught violating ICC rules in the past.

Their reasoning need not be given, and there is no appeals process. We appreciate the cooperation of all participants in keeping this contest friendly, honorable, and running smoothly.

Participants must use the same computer during the whole tournament, unless they are observed by an approved proctor.

In case a player is disqualified from the tournament, the ICC tournament directors can, at their discretion, rule that the game of that player in the running round is lost for him, and won for his opponent. However, results by that player in prior rounds will not be reverted.

7. Related information

• PGN ziped file with the Q1-Q6 games
• Start a Free trial 7-day membership
• Chess960 Rules
• Download Blitzin or Dasher
• Mainz 2006 coverage on the ICC
• Chess Classic Mainz 2007 official site