On March 10, the opening ceremony of the Contenders Tournament was held at the Pashkov House (Moscow) where the FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov delivered a welcome speech. "The capital of Russia would become the centre of world chess for two weeks", said the head of FIDE.The event was also attended by the Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, the Aide to President Igor Levitin, the Minister of Sport Vitaly Mutko, the President of the Russian Olympic Committee Alexander Zhukov, the head of the Russian Chess Federation Andrey Filatov, the head of the board of trustees of the Russian Chess Federation Dmitry Peskov, the businessman Gennady Timchenko, the President of the Chess Federation of Moldova Igor Dodon and other distinguished guests.
Recall that the Contenders Tournament (with the prize fund of 460 thousand dollars) will be held at the Central Telegraph building from 11 to 30 March. The winner will play the match against the current World Champion Norwegian Magnus Carlsen in the United States in November 2016.
The tournament will see eight top world chess players: Levon Aronian (Armenia), Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana (USA), Sergey Karjakin, Peter Svidler (Russia), Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria), Anish Giri (Netherlands) and Viswanathan Anand (India) .
