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 ;-)