Bucharest, once again, the capital of world chess

The opening ceremony of the Superbet Chess Classic Romania 2024, the second stage of the international Grand Chess Tour (GCT), took place yesterday in the Capital. The ceremony was attended by the 10 Grandmasters, the players of this local stage, as well as the special guest Viswanathan (Vishy) Anand, five-time world chess champion, double World Chess Cup champion, India's first grandmaster and the current Vice-President of FIDE . A world chess legend, Anand, also nicknamed the "Madras Tiger', is currently ranked 11th in the world.

The chess tournament will take place under the auspices of a message of trust and hope, celebrating life, peace, universal values and minds that put themselves at the service of good, under the slogan "Uniting Minds".

The players will play in a closed tournament system, each against each other, and the winner will be decided based on the accumulated points. The 10 players who will face each other in the Capital are as follows: Bogdan Daniel Deac: 42nd place in the world, number 2 in Romania; Fabiano Caruana: world number 2, Grand Chess Tour 2023 winner; Ian Nepomniachtchi: world 4th place; Nodirbek Abdusattorov: world 5th place; Gukesh Dommaraju: 6th place in the world; Wesley So: 9th place in the world; Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu: 14th place in the world; Anish Giri: 15th place in the world; Alireza Firouzja: world number 16, Grand Chess Tour 2022 winner; Maxime Vachier-Lagrave: 20th place in the world

On the occasion of the GCT 2024 circuit, the multiple world champion Garry Kasparov, also the founder of the tournament, will be present for the fifth time in Romania. The famous chess player will be in Bucharest in the second part of the local competition calendar. The event is accessible to the general public, and lovers of mind sports can reserve tickets to watch the matches between the 10 Grand Masters, directly in the competition hall. Children up to the age of 14 get in for free. The prizes of the stage in Bucharest reach 350,000 dollars, and those of the entire circuit, to 1.5 million dollars, of which 350,000 dollars for the classical chess stage and 175,000 dollars for each stage of rapid and blitz chess. At the same time, the 2024 edition will also benefit from a bonus prize fund of 275,000 dollars, which will be awarded to the first place finishers at the end of the entire tournament.