8th Montreal Empresa Tournament

The beautiful city of Montreal is hosting the Empresa International, a strong ten-player round-robin that began yesterday. The top seeds are Ivanchuk and Kamsky, with Eljanov, Short, Harikrishna, Sutovsky, Tiviakov, Miton also there to roast local boys Bluvshtein and Charbonneau, who is dusting off his pawns. (Although I believe I can now claim Pascal for Brooklyn as soon as FIDE comes through on that Brooklyn federation application.) The event concludes on July 28th and the only free day is Saturday the 21st. There is a blitz tournament on the 29th.

The round one crosstable is being done manually or else they somehow managed to have three losses and only two wins in the first round. The games page and the results page sort that out. The results page also has some handy notes to each pairing about previous encounters. In round one, Miton, Eljanov, and Harikrishna were winners. Ivanchuk and Kamsky both drew with black. The elves have game replay, not sure if they are all live, too.

Many GMs are also playing in the Quebec Open that runs concurrently at the same Hilton Doubletree Hotel in Montreal.