Women Chess Stars love Gibraltar!

Today I received a letter from the organizer of the Gibtelecom International Open, which takes place each year in Gibraltar in January - February,

From what I have been told by my colleagues women chess players, the tournament is very well organized, and the prizes for top women are excellent.

Judge it for yourself, this is an open tournament, where lots of seasoned male chess grandmasters play (top players GM's Svidler, Milov, Gashimov, Nakamura, etc.). Now the women who come to play also are equally as impressive (Dzagnidze, Stefanova, Cramling, who last year all got 7 points out of 10, only 1 point away from the two male winners).

Note that the first prize for men in this open in 2010 is 15,000 UKP, while for women the first prize is 8,000 UKP, more than $12,000 at today's exchange rate! And also a woman can win not only a woman's prize, but also one for open competition or rating prizes. In the past this has happened.
Thus a woman could win £23,000 next year, plus the Best Game Prize of £1000. I was told that most of the women chess professionals who play there want to go back the next year.

Feel free to write to Brian. I think he'd be very happy if more women join his tournament. Let's show the men what women can do!

Below you can find his letter to me.

Dear Alexandra,

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Brian Callaghan and I am the organiser of the Gibtelecom International Open Chess Tournament in Gibraltar and I have read you open letter with great interest and support.

We are entering our 9^th Tournament which will be held in Gibraltar from Tuesday the 26^th of January, 2010 to Thursday the 4^th of February, 2010 and are now arguably the best Open Tournament in the world according to journalists, vying with Moscow for that honour.

Our objective is to make Gibraltar a place where Chess players want to play. We have increased the prize money year on year and this year will be offering total prize money of £112,000 (up 12% on last year) which is a marvellous result given present financial difficulties.

Perhaps most importantly the Gibraltar Open is a SOCIAL EVENT where some very good, and at times not so good, Chess is played, usually in the sunshine! An important part of our Tournament is the emphasis and encouragement we give for Women Chess players to attend and indeed we are at the forefront of that objective.

This coming year we will be increasing the Women’s prize money by 22% to £22,500.- with the first prize for Women of UKP8,000 and a further seven main prizes.

The top Men’s prize is UKP15,000 with a further 12 main prizes and many, many extremely good rating prizes.

Happily Gibraltar is well supported by Women players but we seek and NEED greater support and that has to become a reality and your support would be most helpful.

I wish you every success in your role in the Commission for Women’s Chess.

With very best wishes,

Brian Callaghan

Organiser Gibtelecom International Open Chess Tournament

Gibraltar

Posted by Alexandra Kosteniuk

Women's World Champion

www.chessblog.com