The participants for the Hoogeveen Chess Matches are known. World top player Vasily Ivanchuk will play the highly talented Wei Yi from China, on 21-26 October in the town hall of Hoogeveen. The Dutch top talent Jorden van Foreest is paired against the strong grandmaster Adhiban Baskaran from India.
Vasily Ivanchuk, from Ukraine, has belonged to the world chess elite for thirty years and is still able to surprise an audience with his brilliant discoveries on the board and his erratic behaviour off it. 18-year-old Wei Yi has been regarded as Magnus Carlsen’s possible successor for several years, and has won various big tournaments already.
The great Dutch talent, Jorden van Foreest, also 18, won the national Dutch title last year. He will play one of the greatest exponents of current Indian chess, Adhiban Baskaran. Adhiban is an engaging personality, who surprised everyone early this year with his third place in the Tata Steel tournament.
The tournament has received a financial injection from a group of 32 local entrepeneurs, who will make a contribution to the event under the name ‘Corps 32’.
The matches will be played daily from Saturday 21-Thursday 26 October. The games start at 14.00h. At the same time, a strong open tournament will be held in the Hoogeveen town hall. This open starts on Saturday 21 October and ends on Saturday 28 October (9 rounds). At this point, grandmasters Abhijeet Gupta (the winner of last year), Sipke Ernst, Roeland Pruijssers and Sahai Grover (like Gupta, from India) have already applied.
Two amateur tournaments will also be held on the same days as the open tournament, one of them in the mornings and the other in the afternoons.
