Azernews.Az

The Azerbaijani chess players are successfully competing in a chess tournament "Aeroflot OPEN - 2013" dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the leading Russian airline company, starting from February 11 till 18 in Moscow.

The first qualifying tournament brought together 300 chess players from more than 20 countries. Azerbaijani chess player Rauf Mammadov scored 4 points after the four games, while Gadir Huseynov scored 3.5 and Vasif Durarbayli 2.5 points respectively.

Mass open blitz tournament will start (Swiss system, 9 double rounds) today. Among participants there will be eight invited chess stars - World Blitz champion Alexander Grischuk, World Cup winner Peter Svidler, Russian champion Dmitry Andreikin, World Rapid champion Sergey Karjakin, Russia`s and Europe`s 2010 champion Yan Nepomnyaschiy and FIDE 2012 Grand Prize stage winners Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbaijan) and Wan Hao (China).

On Friday, 32 qualified players will face each other in a knockout tournament. On the same day the invited stars will play with 90 young amateur chess players. There will be held Grand Final with 8 invited chess stars and 8 qualified players on February 16-17.

"Aeroflot OPEN" is held for the 12th time and the quantity of tournament participants is a spoken legend in the chess world. The history of the festival starts in 2002, and in 2004 it was rated by Guinness World Records as the chess tournament with the highest quantity of participants. Sponsored by Aeroflot and organized by the Russian Chess Federation, this international festival is attracting a lot of amateur and professional chess players from all over the world.