Next top chess tournament in Nice,France

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http://www.amberchess2009.com/
(Amber Chess Tournament 2009 Official Site)

18th Amber Blindfold and Rapid tournamentMarch 14-26, 2009 Nice, France



The twelve participants are (in alphabetical order):

World Champion Viswanathan Anand (India),

Levon Aronian (Armenia),

Magnus Carlsen (Norway),

Vasily Ivanchuk (Ukraine),

Gata Kamsky (United States),

Sergey Karjakin (Ukraine),

Vladimir Kramnik (Russia),

Peter Leko (Hungary),

Alexander Morozevich (Russia),

Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan),

Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria)

and Wang Yue (China).

Remarks:
I am highly appreciative of Mr Van Osterom, the Melody Amber sponsor for more than 15 years, as he helped create an original, entertaining and top-notch formula over the years. This tournament remains unique in many aspects (no ratings, blindfold chess) , whether it is played in Monaco (earlier years) or nowadays Nice. Vive la Cote d'Azur !

I do notice that the line-up is very prestigious and highly "correlated" with the Corus and Linares tournaments. For instance, Dominguez,Wang Yue, Radjabov,Aronian,Carlsen and Ivanchuk will play Corus, Linares and Amber back to back if I am not mistaken. While it is probably the strongest line-up one could think of, I would welcome the inclusion of the following top grandmasters:

H. NAKAMURA
E. BACROT
D. JAKOVENKO

as they have proven they can compete with the very best in rapid and classic tournaments. Also it would bring interesting match-ups varying from Corus and Linares.

Would you agree with this suggestion ?