Bazna Kings 2010

The 4th edition of the Kings Tournament is held in Bazna, in the heart of Transylvania, June 14 - June 25. The tournament is part of the Grand Slam and with the average participants rating of 2742 (XX category) it is the strongest one this year.

The most intriguing player is the world number 1, the Norwegian GM Magnus Carlsen (2813). The other players are the former World Champion GM Ruslan Ponomariov, the World Cup winner GM Boris Gelfand, the Chinese star GM Wang Yue, GM Teimour Radjabov and the former European Champion Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu.

The system used is double round-robin. Each round the ChessBomb live broadcast starts at 12:30 GMT except for the last one, starting 2 hours earlier.

Meanwhile, after the end of Poikovsky 2010 we are broadcasting two other exciting tournaments. The last year Bazna winner GM Vassily Ivanchuk is in Cuba and is part of the Capablanca Memorial. The young starts GM Ivan Cheparinov and GM Fabiano Caruana fight for the win with 6 other players at the Ruy Lopez Festival.

Sigeman & Co Chess Tournament

Only a day after the exciting final of the US Championship and two after Astrakhan GP, ChessBomb begins to follow 18th annual Sigeman & Co Chess Tournament. The classical Hipp Theater in central Malmo hosts the tournament for thirteenth time. Six players will fight in a round-robin, starting on May 26. Games begin at 11:00 GMT, except for the last round, starting 2 hours earlier. GM Anish Giri (Holland, 2642) is the top seeded and the youngest (15 years old) participant. The other and not less intriguing players are: GM Jon Ludvig Hammer (Norway, 2610), GM Jonny Hector (Sweden, 2609), GM Tiger Hillarp Persson (Sweden, 2542), GM Pia Cramling (Sweden, 2536) and IM Nils Grandelius (Sweden, 2476). As usual, the broadcast will be accompanied by Stockfish's expert opinion.

U.S. Chess Championship 2010

The 2010 U.S. Chess Championship is currently underway (May 13 - May 25). All games are broadcasted live on ChessBomb. Each round starts at 19:00 GMT, except the possible tie break on May 25, which is at 15:00 GMT.

Astrakhan Grand-Prix 2010

The final FIDE Grand-Prix tournament is held from 9th to 25th May in Astrakhan, Russia. The second qualifier for the Candidates Matches 2010-2011 after Levon Aronian will become clear. Games will be played in round robin format starting on May 10th, while 15th and 20th May are rest days. The participants are:

• Vladimir Akopian (Armenia 2694)
• Evgeny Alekseev (Russia 2700)
• Pavel Eljanov (Ukraine 2751)
• Vugar Gashimov (Azerbaijan 2734)
• Boris Gelfand (Israel 2741)
• Ernesto Inarkiev (Russia 2669)
• Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukraine 2741)
• Dmitry Jakovenko (Russia 2725)
• Peter Leko (Hungary 2735)
• Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbaijan 2763)
• Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine 2733)
• Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan 2740)
• Peter Svidler (Russia 2735)
• Wang Yue (China 2752)

The Games will be broadcast live on ChessBomb.com every playing day at 11:00 GMT. The most intriguing games will have unlimited analysis for our premium members.

ChessBomb Premium - Free for Everyone this Saturday

Tomorrow (Saturday, 1 May 2010) we will temporarily upgrade everyone's account to Extra Premium status during the game (round 6 of the Anand-Topalov match). Here's a gentle reminder about the additional features you will experience during this demo:

• Ad-free interface
• Unlimited analysis time (unleashing the full power of Stockfish)
• Unrestricted chat
• PGN file download

Even non-registered guest visitors will see unlimited analysis time and no ads. So jump on board, and bring friends as well :) These features are normally available starting from € 1.99 / month.

There are a couple of caveats, however:

• We expect the chat to become almost unusable due to the tremendous message flood. You will see why the restrictions we have in place are necessary :) Unfortunately, the chat room paradigm is not designed for many thousands simultaneous posters in a single room.

ChessBomb moderator at work tomorrow

• The Premium features put the server infrastructure under greater stress. When enabled for everyone, the stress is significant. So small disasters are possible... although we expect to hold well.

Main ChessBomb server after tomorrow

Now please excuse us while we run to prepare our poor little servers for this torture ;-)

ChessBomb Premium Goes Live

We are proud to introduce for you several new features, in time for the Topalov-Anand World Chess Championship Match in Sofia 2010. First, rest assured - all our previous features remain free, just like before. However, starting today we are offering several new Premium features, for a small fee (as low as € 1.99 per month).

Here are the benefits available to the owners of our new Premium Accounts:

• Advertisment-free interface.
• Infinite analysis of the last played move. In this manner you can enjoy the full power of our preferred engine Stockfish (which is dethroning Rybka 3 from the top spot in various rating lists) with regular updates for the current position.
• Unrestricted chat - premium accounts are not subject to the 10 messages per minute limitation.
• PGN file download of every game.

See detailed comparison and upgrade your account here.

Anand-Topalov World Chess Championship match live on ChessBomb.com

Today (April 21, 2010) the official opening of the most anticipated chess event of the year took place in Sofia, Bulgaria - the match for the world title between champion Viswanathan Anand and the challenger ex-champion Veselin Topalov. The clash of the titans will start on the board one day later than originally planned. The postponenement was due to the long trip of Vishy Anand to Sofia caused by the volcano in Iceland. So the first game is scheduled for Saturday, April 24 2010 12:00 GMT (15:00 EEST).

The ChessBomb team is working hard to bring you the best online coverage of this great and long expected match. The realtime analysis will be provided by the awesome Stockfish engine, which we additionally tweaked and upgraded to the latest 1.7.1 version (it has already dethroned Rybka 3 from the first place on some lists, for example CCRL FRC). As you may recall, we recently replaced Rybka 2.2 with Stockfish.

Stay tuned for some additional great announcements from us before the start of the games...