3rd Metropolitan FIDE Invitational

Metropolitan Chess will host a International Master norm round robin tournament on February 23rd to 27th of 2011. The tournament is sponsored by California Market Center, Fashion Business, Inc, Chess.com, LawyerFy, and Betty Bottom Showroom.

Metropolitan Chess has a new website at www.metrochessla.com. Standings will be updated regularly at the website. A video recapping our last tournament can be found here.

This tournament will be held in Suite C998 of the California Market Center on 110 East 9th Street, Los Angeles 90079. The tournament is organized by Ankit Gupta, the chief arbiter is Randy Hough, and the deputy arbiter is Michael Belcher. The participants include: IM Zhanibek Amanov (KAZ), IM Timothy Taylor (USA), IM Jacek Stopa (POL), FM Alexandre Kretchetov, FM Joel Banawa, FM Michael Casella, FM Philip Wang, NM Konstantin Kavutskiy, NM Kayden Troff, and CM Giovanni Nieto Carreto. The FIDE average of the field is 2305, for a respectable category 4. Photos of some of the participants are shown below:

Photo Credit: Christian Glawe

The tournament will be a 10 player round-robin (all play all), with rounds scheduled as follows – 23rd: 7:00 PM, 24th: 11:00 AM & 5:00 PM, 25th: 11:00 AM & 5:00 PM, 26th: 11:00 AM & 5:00 PM, 27th: 10:00 AM & 4:00 PM. Spectators are welcome and encouraged to come to watch the games in person at the tournament site. There will be two master commentary days live on-site. These commentaries will also be viewable on www.chess.com/tv

 Commentaries will be at 6:00 PM on February 26th and 5:00 PM on February 27th for the 7th and 9th rounds of the tournament, respectively. IM D. Pruess and NM A. Gupta will be commenting together for both of the commentary days. Local players/spectators are welcome to come to the tournament site to hear the commentaries live -- talk to the security in the lobby of the building to be directed to the proper room.

Stay tuned for more updates and watch the games relayed live on www.chess.com to find out the results.