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Opening ceremony at the Candidates 2016 -- Go Vishy!

by Sagar Shah and Amruta Mokal - 11/03/2016

The biggest chess extravaganza of 2016, the World Championship Candidates Tournament, is just hours away. The first round will be played at 3 p.m. local time on the 11th of March in the Central Telegraph building in Moscow. After playing the Aeroflot Blitz yesterday, Sagar Shah and Amruta Mokal made their way to the opening ceremony and sent us some exclusive material from the Russian capital. A report from Moscow.

Opening ceremony at the Candidates 2016

Report from Moscow by Sagar Shah and Amruta Mokal

 

The Cosmos Hotel, where we were staying and the where the Aeroflot Open was held, was around twelve kilometres away from the Pashkov House, where the Opening Ceremony was going to be held. In the map above you can also see that Pashkov House is very closely situated to the Central Telegraph building -- the venue for the tournament.

The Cosmos Hotel, with 1700 rooms, has quite a unique shape

At this time of the year, the temperature is supposed to quite low in Moscow.
However on this particular day, it was a pleasant four degrees Celsius!

Considering the road traffic in Moscow, travelling by Metro is the fastest way to move around in the city. Thanks to google maps and helpful Russian people it is was not at all difficult to locate the heritage structure where the opening ceremony was to take place.

The Pashkov House

The Pashkov House is a neoclassical mansion that stands on a hill overlooking the western wall of the Moscow Kremlin, near the crossing of the Mokhovaya and Vozdvizhenka streets. It used to be home to the Rumyantsev Museum, Moscow's first public museum, in the 19th century. The palace's current owner is the Russian State Library.

Winner of the previous Candidates and five-time World Champion Vishy Anand made
his way to the opening ceremony around 8 p.m. In the picture, you can also see the man
who has been working extremely hard to get the entire show running: Agon CEO Ilya Merenzon.

 

What do you think of Anand's chances in this year's Candidates?

 

You can read the full report on the opening ceremony of the 2016 Candidates with many interesting details on the international newspage of ChessBase, here.

 

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