The Gibraltar International Chess Festival is a

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

tournament held annually at the

Caleta Hotel The Caleta Hotel, also known as Caleta Palace Hotel, was a four star hotel in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. It was located at Catalan Bay on the east coast of the territory overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It owed its name to ''La ...

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. Its eleven days of competition usually run from late January to early February. The inaugural edition, then known as the ''

Gibtelecom Gibtelecom is the largest telecommunications provider in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. Its headquarters is located on John Mackintosh Square. History The first telephones were introduced to Gibraltar in 1886 by a private company ...

Gibraltar Chess Festival'', took place in 2003, when fifty-nine competitors took part, of whom 24 held the FIDE Grandmaster title. In 2011 the festival was renamed to the ''Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival'' when Tradewise Insurance Company Ltd became the new primary sponsor. Beginning in 2019 Tradewise no longer sponsored the tournament and the name was changed to the ''Gibraltar International Chess Festival''.

History

The main event, the Masters, is open to all, and was voted the best open event in the world by the

Association of Chess Professionals The Association of Chess Professionals (ACP) is a non-profit organisation which aims to protect the rights of professional chess players, address their concerns and to promote chess worldwide through the organisation of high level chess tournament ...

in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. Since 2011 an annual Gibraltar Junior International Chess Festival, also held at the Caleta Hotel, has been organised. It lasts five days and takes place in August and it comprises two events: under-16 and under-12. The Director of the Gibraltar International Chess Festival has been

Stuart Conquest Stuart C. Conquest (born 1 March 1967 in Ilford, England) is an English chess Grandmaster, commentator and tournament director. Chess career In 1981, at the age of 14, he won the World Youth Chess Championship in the under-16 category. Conquest ...

since 2011. In 2012, special stamps were issued by the Gibraltar Post Office to commemorate the tenth edition of the chess festival. In 2012 Chinese grandmaster Hou Yifan, at the time ranked number two female chess player in the world, scored 8 points from a possible 10 in the Masters, tying for first place with Nigel Short before losing a play-off match for the first prize. During this event Hou Yifan defeated Judit Polgár, number one rated female chess player in the world from 1989 to her retirement as a professional player in 2014.ChessBase News: Hou Yifan beats Judit Polgar in an historic encounter
/ref> The highest score achieved in a Gibraltar Masters event has been 9 points from a possible 10, by Vasyl Ivanchuk in 2011, with a performance rating of 2968. In 2017, Hou Yifan caused controversy by intentionally throwing her final game of the tournament in 5 moves against Babu M.R. Lalith to protest the pairings. Hou had grown dissatisfied in recent years with playing in women-only tournaments, and had just dropped out of the

Women's World Chess Championship The Women's World Chess Championship (WWCC) is played to determine the world champion in women's chess. Like the World Chess Championship, it is administered by FIDE. Unlike with most sports recognized by the International Olympic Committee, wher ...

cycle. In Gibraltar, she faced 7 women in her 10 games when the men/women ratio in the tournament was 4:1. The incident was resolved as an extremely unlikely series of computer-generated pairings which nevertheless actually happened, and the result of the protest game stood.

List of winners

Since 2007, ties for first place in the Masters have been resolved by a tie-break. :

References

External links

Official website
{{Chess tournaments Chess competitions Festivals in Gibraltar 2003 in chess Recurring sporting events established in 2003 2003 establishments in Gibraltar International sports competitions hosted by Gibraltar Annual events in Gibraltar Chess in Gibraltar