MTel Masters 2009 - Photo Gallery round 1. You can use the photos for free on your site or blog.

The fourth FIDE Grand Prix Tournament takes place in the Intour Hotel Sindica in Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria, Russia, from April 14th to 29th, 2009. The tournament seems to be the strongest one in the series.
The participants are:

Bulgarian GM Veselin Topalov leads FIDE's official ranking.
The new FIDE Top 10 (April 2009):

№	Name	Title	FED	Rating	Games	B-Year
1	Topalov, Veselin	g	BUL	2812	17	1975
2	Anand, Viswanathan	g	IND	2783	14	1969
3	Carlsen, Magnus	g	NOR	2770	27	1990
4	Kramnik, Vladimir	g	RUS	2759	0	1975
5	Radjabov, Teimour	g	AZE	2756	27	1987
6	Aronian, Levon	g	ARM	2754	37	1982
7	Jakovenko, Dmitry	g	RUS	2753	5	1983
8	Morozevich, Alexander	g	RUS	2751	13	1977
9	Leko, Peter	g	HUN	2751	0	1979
10	Grischuk, Alexander	g	RUS	2748	14	1983

The official FIDE Top 100 is available on their website:

The 5th M-Tel Masters super grandmaster chess tournament will be held 12th-23rd of May in Sofia, Bulgaria. Six top Grandmasters will play double round robin event in a special prepeared glass cube to be built on the square in front of the National Theater "Ivan Vazov". This tournament is also birthplace of well known "Sofian rules in chess".
Participants:

Mtel Masters 2009, XXI cat.
№	Name	Fed	ELO
1.	Veselin Topalov	BUL	2812
2.	Magnus Carlsen	NOR	2770
3.	Vassily Ivanchuk	UKR	2746
4.	Alexey Shirov	SPA	2745
5.	Wang Yue	CHI	2738
6.	Lenier Peres-Dominguez	CUB	2721

The MTel Masters 2009 winner wins a quota for The Grand Slam Tournament Final in Bilbao, Spain.
Official website and live games coverage will be available soon.

Traditional chess festival “Amber 2009” is held from 14th to 26th March 2009 in Nice (France). Participants are the best chessplayers in the world: Anand, Kramnik, Aronian, Carlsen, Ivanchuk, Karjakin, Leko, Morozevich, Radjabov, Wang Yue, Kamsky and the best Bulgarian chessplayer Veselin Topalov (FIDE World Chess Championship’s candidate against the world champion Viswanathan Anand).

Bulgarian GM Kiril Georgiev played simul against chess fans and players to improve the Guinnes world record for maximum number of simultaneous games. The event took place on February 21, 2009 Hall number 5 of the International Exhibition Center (Inter Expo Center) in Sofia with an excellent organization by the hosts Chess Club Levski (b.r. Congratulations!). Time to conduct the event was not chosen randomly - Sofia this year celebrates 130 years by declaring as Bulgarian capital city.

The Simul - general information
In the simul attended 360 chess players and enthusiasts from all over Bulgaria. The minimum number of participants, which was required for setting a new Guinness world record was 327 people. As a tradition of simultaneous play, whites of all boards were assigned GM Kiril Georgiev.

GM Kiril Georgiev's simul and the Guinness world record
To be a Guinness world recorder it was necessary to improve previous record of the Susan Polgar passed August 01, 2005. She had played a total of 1131 games against 326 other people in Florida USA, which was average above 3 games per person.

GM Kiril Georgiev was targeted to record the maximum number of games, both initiated and completed until 24 hours after the start of the simul. Here the condition for success is to have a positive final balance.

The second record, which Kiril Georgiev and organizers had targeted, was to improve the record for most won games. In this case, Kiril Georgiev should achieve a number of wins (b.r. not points but win?). It was over 310 wins.
What was improved and what failed? This will find out later in the article. Now go in chronological order...

The Linares 2009 grandmaster chess tournament takes place in Linares (Spain), 19th of February - 2nd of March 2009. The World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand is taking participation in the tournament. He was the last 2 editions winner in Linares. Later this year Anand will play against Bulgarian super-grandmaster Veselin Topalov, who won the challengers match against Gata Kamsky.

After round 6 in Linares 2009 Alexander Grischuk leads by 5 points, Anand is 5th with 3,5 points. Round 6 Standings...

The World Chess Challengers Match between GM Veselin Topalov and GM Gata Kamsky was finaly closed. With a total score of 4,5:2,5 points Topalov won the match in the penultimate round.
The match held in the excellent event organization and live broadcasting on the Internet.
Later this year is the long-expected unitive World Chess Championship 2009 Match between current champion - GM Vishwanatan Anand from India and the one pretender - Bulgarian Veselin Topalov. It is the match to be held in October 2009.
We will broadcast The World Chess Championship Match Anand - Topalov 2009 Live Here.

The 8th Internationan Chess festival Aeroflot 2009 took place in Moscow (Russia), 16-25 February 2009.

Étienne Bacrot won tournament "A1" (grandmaster level) by result of 6,5 points. The additional indicators determined that he is the winner, because he played 5 games with black and 4 with white pieces. Second position for Alexander Moiseenko, which have same result - 6,5 points, but he played 4 games with black and 5 with white.

The best women was Tatiana Kosintseva with 5,5 points.

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov was one of the participants in the tournament, but he lose his game 5 and didn't finish it. Full standing below...

Veselin Topalov won the 5th game against Gata Kamsky in French defence. This opening was very bad choice for Gata, especially at the super-grandmasters's level. Now the result is Topalov-Kamsky - 3-2.

The next game starts tomorrow (tuesday) at 15.00 Sofia Time. You can watch the game Live: Live chess games - Applet 1

3 games rest...