Amber chess tournament

The Amber chess tournament (officially the Amber Rapid and Blindfold Chess Tournament, previously Melody Amber) was an annual invitation-only event for some of the world's best players, from 1992 to 2011. Since the second edition, the event uniquely combined blindfold chess and speed chess, and has been held in Monte Carlo. The tournament was sponsored by the Dutch businessman and world champion of correspondence chess, Joop van Oosterom. Named after his daughter, the tournament was usually held in March. Her sister was the eponym to the Crystal Kelly Cup.

Vladimir Kramnik won the most overall titles with six. Viswanathan Anand is the only player to have won both the rapid and blindfold events in the same year (he did it twice, in 1997 and 2005). The most rapid events have been won by Anand (nine times), and the most blindfold events have been won by Kramnik (nine times).

Nearly every world class player has played in the tournament but Garry Kasparov. Vassily Ivanchuk is the only player to have played in all 20 editions.

The 20th Amber Tournament was held in 2011 in Monaco, as was the first Amber Tournament.

Winners

#	Year	Overall Winner	Rapidplay Winner	Blindfold Winner
1	1992	Vassily Ivanchuk		(no blindfold)
2	1993	Ljubomir Ljubojević	Ljubomir Ljubojević	Viswanathan Anand Anatoly Karpov
3	1994	Viswanathan Anand	Viswanathan Anand Vladimir Kramnik	Viswanathan Anand
4	1995	Anatoly Karpov	Anatoly Karpov	Vladimir Kramnik
5	1996	Vladimir Kramnik	Viswanathan Anand Vassily Ivanchuk	Vladimir Kramnik
6	1997	Viswanathan Anand	Viswanathan Anand	Viswanathan Anand [1]
7	1998	Alexei Shirov Vladimir Kramnik	Vassily Ivanchuk Alexei Shirov	Vladimir Kramnik
8	1999	Vladimir Kramnik	Viswanathan Anand	Vladimir Kramnik Alexei Shirov Veselin Topalov
9	2000	Alexei Shirov	Alexei Shirov	Vladimir Kramnik [2] Archived 2009-04-26 at the Wayback Machine
10	2001	Vladimir Kramnik Veselin Topalov	Boris Gelfand Vladimir Kramnik	Veselin Topalov [3] Archived 2009-03-28 at the Wayback Machine
11	2002	Alexander Morozevich	Boris Gelfand	Alexander Morozevich [4] Archived 2009-01-04 at the Wayback Machine
12	2003	Viswanathan Anand	Evgeny Bareev	Vladimir Kramnik
13	2004	Alexander Morozevich Vladimir Kramnik	Viswanathan Anand	Alexander Morozevich [5]
14	2005	Viswanathan Anand	Viswanathan Anand	Viswanathan Anand
15	2006	Viswanathan Anand Alexander Morozevich	Viswanathan Anand	Alexander Morozevich
16	2007	Vladimir Kramnik	Viswanathan Anand	Vladimir Kramnik
17	2008	Levon Aronian	Levon Aronian	Levon Aronian Vladimir Kramnik Alexander Morozevich Veselin Topalov [6]
18	2009	Levon Aronian	Viswanathan Anand Levon Aronian Gata Kamsky	Levon Aronian Magnus Carlsen Vladimir Kramnik
19	2010	Magnus Carlsen Vassily Ivanchuk	Magnus Carlsen Vassily Ivanchuk	Alexander Grischuk
20	2011	Levon Aronian	Magnus Carlsen	Levon Aronian [7] Archived 2011-03-27 at the Wayback Machine

Melody Amber 1992

The first tournament was played from 3 to 13 February 1992 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin as a double round robin competition of rapid chess. The first round-robin was won by Viswanathan Anand, undefeated with a score of 8/11, closely followed by Vassily Ivanchuk with 7.5 points. In the second half of the tournament, Victor Korchnoi appeared the strongest with 7/11. Anand lost three games (including his final round game with white against Larsen), which allowed Ivanchuk to take over the lead in the very last round. Ivanchuk scored a total of 14/22. Anand finished second with 13.5 points, while Anatoly Karpov, Victor Korchnoi and Ljubomir Ljubojević shared third place with 12.5/22. Remarkable was the participation of 15-year-old Judit Polgár, who finished 10th. The oldest player in the field was Korchnoi aged 61, while prize money totalled US$100,000 with US$20,000 for the winner.

A separate Blitz tournament, with the same participants plus Larry Christiansen and Susan Polgar, was played on 7 February. Ljubojević won with a score of 10/13.

Tournament books

A book on the first tournament was published in 1992.

In the following six years (1993–1998), tournament books were published on each tournament for that year. The first four were produced by Guido den Broeder, in association with chess grandmasters such as John van der Wiel and John Nunn. The last two were produced by Dagobert Kohlmeyer, in association with John Nunn.

References

• Crowther, Mark (29 March 1999), THE WEEK IN CHESS 229: The Eighth Amber Blindfold and Rapid Chess Tournament, London Chess Center

External links

• Official website for the 19th Amber Blindfold and Rapid Chess Tournament 2010 Archived 2015-12-26 at the Wayback Machine
• Official website of the 20th and final Amber tournament