The Association of Chess Federations with the support of the CIS Interstate Fund for Humanitarian Cooperation will hold the Sixth Open International Mikhail Botvinnik World Chess Cup from August 11 to 18 in Moscow.
Junior teams from nine CIS countries – Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – will compete in the tournament.
The tournament will be held in a nine-round round-robin format under a classical time control of 90 minutes per game, with an addition of 30 seconds per move starting from move one. All games will be broadcast online.
Each team is headed by a grandmaster captain and consists of three boys and one girl under the age of 14. The captains will play simultaneous exhibition matches against young players from other teams using chess clocks. The points scored by all members of a team, including the children and the captain, will be added together to determine the team’s overall score.
For many young participants, this tournament will be their first encounter with a grandmaster at the board and, perhaps, a gateway to professional chess. Many of the players who played in the Botvinnik Cup have already become International Masters and Grandmasters: Aleksandra Maltsevskaya, Ivan Skitsko, Gleb Dudin, Viachaslau Zarubitski, Olga Badelka, Nikolozi Kacharava, Ravan Aliyev, Armen Barseghyan, Murad Ibrahimli, Kazybek Nogerbek, Ramazan Zhalmakhanov, Arystan Isanzhulov, Ilya Martinovich, Nikoloz Petriashvili, and others. They currently compete for their national teams in World and Asian Championships, World Chess Olympiads, and other international competitions.