Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival

The Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival runs from 24 January - 3 February 2011. 

This popular event has a new sponsor - Tradewise Insurance Company Ltd - and a bigger prize fund this year of £126,000.  The winner of the Masters will take home £17,500 and the top woman gets £10,000.

The format of the main event, the Gibraltar Masters, is a 10 round Swiss at standard time controls of 40 moves in 100 minutes, followed by 20 moves in 50 minutes, and then 15 minutes to finish with a 30 second increment from the start.

The masters tournament starts on Tuesday 25 January, with live commentary available at the official website starting from 15:00 local time (GMT+1).

The tournament also has its own Facebook and Twitter pages, as well as webcam broadcasts from the playing hall.

Last year's champion Michael Adams is back to defend his title, but just pipping him as top seed this year is Vassily Ivanchuk (pictured above).  Sadly, the new women's world champion Hou Yifan has had to withdraw due to a serious illness in her family.

The top 100 entrants are listed below.

Nadezhda Kosintseva, Stuart Conquest (tournament director) and Tatiana Kosintseva. The Russian chess sisters gave a tandem simul yesterday, winning 20 games, drawing 2 and losing none
(picture from the official website)