The Internet Chess Club (ICC), in conjunction with the Gibtelecom Chess Festival, are offering ICC members a unique opportunity to win a round trip ticket, hotel room, breakfast & dinner and an automatic invite to the 8th Gibtelecom Chess Festival, running January 26th to February 4th 2010 at the  Caleta Hotel, recently voted Gibraltar's best hotel.

You will be joined by many of the world's leading Grandmasters in an exclusive online qualifier — open to ICC members only — to one of the world’s best chess festivals. The winner of this package will be determined in a two-stage tournament event on ICC, the 6 qualifier tournaments running the weekend of November 27th to 29th, and the 16-player knockout final to be held on Saturday, December 5th. The time control throughout the tournament (both qualifiers and knockout stage) will be 3,0.

You will be joined by many of the world's leading Grandmasters, in what is hailed by many as one of the best chess events in the world! This Blitz Tournament Qualifier is open to all ICC members.

The winner of the tournament will receive a round trip ticket, hotel room and breakfast and automatic seat to the exclusive Gibetelecom Chess Festival.

In case the winner cannot travel to Gibraltar, the first prize will be awarded to the runner up. In case also the runner up cannot travel, the first prize will be offered to the player who lost to the later winner in the semifinals, and after that to the other semifinalist. In those cases, the winner will only receive the cash prize which the player who eventually travels to Gibraltar originally won.

Second place will receive USD 400 in cash. Third and fourth place will receive USD 150 in cash each.

In addition, there will be prizes raffled between all participants who finish a qualifier, for EVERY qualifier. Ten 1-month ICC extensions per qualifier, giving a total of 60 months just for playing. Note that in order to be eligible for the raffle, (a) the qualifier must be finished orderly (not forfeited), (b) the player did not qualify for the finals, and (c) the account used is a paid one.

On top of this, there will be prizes for the players who score the most points over ALL qualifiers but who do not win through to the finals:

Should GM/IMs win membership extensions, they can donate those extensions to other players of their choice.

You can see the standings in this most-points competition by typing

tell pear ser b gib2009

Cash prizes other than first prize will be paid by cheque. Other payment methods require the approval of ICC.

Tournament Times

Friday, 27 November:

Qualifier 1 − 3pm ICC Server Time (3pm ET, 9pm CET)
Qualifier 2 - 6pm ICC Server Time (6pm ET, 12am CET)

Saturday, 28 November:

Qualifier 3 − 2pm ICC Server Time (2pm ET, 8pm CET)
Qualifier 4 - 5pm ICC Server Time (5pm ET, 11pm CET)

Sunday, 29 November:

Qualifier 5 − 2pm ICC Server Time (2pm ET, 8pm CET)
Qualifier 6 - 5pm ICC Server Time (5pm ET, 11pm CET)

Knockout Final - 2pm Server Time (2pm ET, 8pm CET)

The top two players from each of the six qualifiers will advance to the knockout finals. In case of a tie, the usual tiebreaks of Tomato tournaments will apply. They are described in detail in "tell tomato help tie". The remaining four seats will go to the players who scored most points over all qualifiers combined. In case of a tie in overall points, placings in the best qualifier of each respective player determines who enters the finals. In order to see overall point standings, type "tell pear ser b gib2009".

Players can take part in all qualifiers if they want to. In case a player who is already qualified reaches the top two in the other qualifiers, his/her seat will be awarded to the next best player.

Finalists will be sorted by the ICC Blitz rating they had when they played their qualifier. The grid will display the following pairings (top to bottom) and qualifiers who go through to the next round will be paired accordingly: 1-16, 8-9, 5-12, 4-13, 3-14, 6-11, 7-10, 2-15.

In the knockout finals, "mini-matches" of four games will be played and if a tie occurs after that, two more games will be played. If still tied after that, another two games at a reduced time control of 2 0 follow, and in case it is 4-4 then, another pair of games at a time control of 1 0 will be played, and so on, until a decision is reached. In the final of the last two, the match will have six games. After that in the case it is 3-3, tiebreaker pairs of games will be played as above.

A match in the finals ends before four (six) games are played, if one player has 2.5 points or more (3.5 or more in the final of the last two).

No preregistration is necessary for this tournament. Show up about 10 minutes before the scheduled start and type "tell pear join" or click on the entry button in your event list. Disconnecting before the start will remove you from the tournament. If you disconnect after the start, you will not be removed automatically, but you need to return as soon as possible, or the manager will forfeit you. You can follow the tournament in channel 227. Participants will automatically be placed in this channel.

The standings and pairings are available here:

¤	1/8 FINAL	1/4 FINAL	1/2 FINAL	FINAL
1 16	DusanTheGreat Kseroks
8 9	Fier dinamit
5 12	Federicov CapitalG
4 13	Janosik SuperPeon
3 14	VerdeNotte HuevosDeLeon
6 11	Universitario eczaci
7 10	Vladimirovich Wagner
2 15	manest SuperJEM

Seed Handle Real Name Title Blitzrating Country 1 DusanTheGreat Igor Miladinovic GM 3130 Serbia 2 manest Alex Lenderman IM 3082 USA 3 VerdeNotte Gawain Jones GM 3048 England 4 Janosik Falko Bindrich GM 3032 Germany 5 Federicov Federico Perez Ponsa IM 3018 Argentina 6 Universitario Renato Terry Lujan FM 3006 Peru 7 Vladimirovich Dmitry Andreikin GM 2996 Russia 8 Fier Alexandr Fier GM 2888 Brazil 9 dinamit Artur Gabrielyan GM 2883 Russia 10 Wagner Levon Altounian IM 2872 USA 11 eczaci Baris Esen IM 2851 Turkey 12 CapitalG Kazim Gulamali none 2773 USA 13 SuperPeon Marc Christian Nazario none 2639 Philippines 14 HuevosDeLeon Leonardo Tristan IM 2621 Argentina 15 SuperJEM Jan Emmanuel Garcia none 2612 Philippines 16 Kseroks Vitaliy Kiselev GM 2591 Russia

Q Qualifies Results 1 Vladimirovich(GM)(2996) VerdeNotte(GM)(3048) Qualifier 1 2 manest(IM)(3082) Wagner(IM)(2872) Qualifier 2 3 Kseroks(GM)(2591) DusantheGreat(GM)(3130) Qualifier 3 4 Fier (GM)(2888) SuperJEM (2612) Qualifier 4 5 Federicov(IM)(3018) Janosik (GM)(3032) Qualifier 5 6 Dinamit (GM)(2883) eczaci (IM)(2851) Qualifier 6

1 50.5 Universitario 2 46.5 CapitalG 3 46.5 SuperPeon 4 45.0 Gamblerz - cannot play 5 44.5 HuevosDeLeon 6 43.5 gile 7 43.0 unkavalo 8 42.5 playwaycool 9 42.0 GolubevM 10 42.0 Machinegun

You need to have a full ICC membership to take part in this tournament. Free trials cannot play. As the real names of the finalists will be made public, players who own free GM/WGM/IM/WIM accounts on ICC are required to use their public handles in this tournament, as opposed to anonymous accounts.

You need to use the most recent version of Blitzin (2.7) or Dasher (1.3) to play in this tournament.

Other Rules