SAINT LOUIS (June 7, 2016) – The 2016 Grand Chess Tour starts June 9th with back to back tournaments in Paris, France and Leuven, Belgium. The four-stop international chess tour features the world’s elite chess players, and this year, the Grand Chess Tour launches with the Paris Grand Chess Tour June 9-12
th, 2016.
The four day tournament will take place at Maison De La Chimie in Paris, France and will feature nine rounds of rapid matches and 18 rounds of blitz. The $150,000 total prizes and grand chess tour points are awarded based on the combined results from both formats.
Nine countries will be represented in the Grand Chess Tour, including World Champion and 2015 Grand Chess Tour Winner Magnus Carlsen, from Norway, along with three other former world champions: Vladimir Kramnik of Russia, Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, and Viswanathan Anand of India.
Three Americans are competing in the tournament as well: Fabiano Caruana, 2016 U.S. Chess Champion; Hikaru Nakamura, 2015 U.S. Chess Champion; and Wesley So, 2016 U.S. Chess Championship runner-up. The best French players are also competing for the title: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Laurent Fressinet. Rounding out the tournament are Anish Giri of the Netherlands and Levon Aronian of Armenia.
A special appearance and first move of the tour will be made by legendary world champion Garry Kasparov to kick off the Grand Chess Tour.
A 100% LIVE AND CONNECTED TOURNAMENT
All 27 rounds of the four-day tournament will be streamed live direct from the venue and made available to all major chess websites and portals to broadcast in real time and free of charge. All games will be broadcast live with commentary set to be provided in English, French and Spanish. The round by round coverage will include a number of exciting new features which will be enabled through the Dailymotion Games Player. Dailymotion Games is one of the largest live-streaming video platforms in the world for all things related to gaming.
The tournament set-up will include a new multi-camera presentation, which will enable online spectators to choose which games they wish to follow. In addition, there will also be live chat features, as well as instructional videos during the course of each day’s play.
The Dailymotion broadcast will be accessible via tablets, smartphones and PlayStation 4. Any websites wishing to carry the games and live commentary streams can embed a simple Dailymotion application to make the features available to their audience.
SUPPORTED WITH PASSION BY OUR SPONSORS
The Paris Grand Chess Tour could not have had taken place without the involvement of Colliers International and Vivendi. Vivendi a multinational, integrated mass media company and content group, combines several leading companies in the fields of content provision and media and seeks to modernize the ancient game of chess in the firm belief that the time is right for it to reach a wider audience.
“Content is king…what more is there for Vivendi than to invest in chess, the king of games?” said Stephane Roussel, Chief Operating Officer of Vivendi.
Collier’s International, a Real-Estate Enterprise; their involvement was initated by their company president Gilles Betthaeuser, who is a strong player and chess enthusiast himself. He commented, “Colliers is happy to be associated with this World Class Tournament. The Real Estate Business and chess demand the same qualities from practitioners, not only the capacity to take risks, appreciate a project’s hidden dimensions or an opponent’s manoeuvers, but also the ability to take good decisions in a complex environment. Having our names associated with this event was an obvious call for us to make.”
Your Next Move, a non-profit organization and the organizer of the Your Next Move tournament, promotes chess as an educational tool for children and youngsters in Belgium. By playing chess, kids learn to analyze and assess difficult situations, to act fast and under pressure. Chess enables them to learn to think in a creative and strategic way. Those same qualities will prove to be indispensable in life which increasingly becomes more complex, more global, where evolutions become revolutions and communication channels multiply all the time.
"This partnership is perfect for our goal to raise an overall awareness of chess and its benefits to children," said Jan Callewaert, founder of Your Next Move.
For more information, visit
www.parisgrandchesstour.com,
www.yournextmove.be or
www.grandchesstour.org.
About Grand Chess Tour
The Grand Chess Tour is a circuit of international events, each demonstrating the highest level of organization for the world's best players. The 2016 Tour was created in partnership between the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis (Sinquefield Cup) and Chess Promotions, Ltd. (London Chess Classic). The legendary Garry Kasparov, one of the world's greatest ambassadors for chess, inspired the Grand Chess Tour and helped solidify the partnership between the organizers. His tireless efforts to popularize the game around the world mirror the goals and ambitions of the Grand Chess Tour.
The 2016 Grand Chess Tour stops consist of the Paris Grand Chess Tour in Paris, France June 9-12; Your Next Move Grand Chess Tour in Leuven, Belgium June 17-20; the Sinquefield Cup in Saint Louis, USA Aug. 4-16; and the London Classic in London, UK Dec. 8-19, 2016.
For More Information, Contact:
Michael Khodarkovsky
Grand Chess Tour Spokesperson
Phone: 201-317-8581
Email: michael@grandchesstour.org
