After some hiccups on the first two days, the Sunway Sitges International Online Chess Open is now well underway. It's a historic event: never before has a Swiss tournament with a classical time control been held online.
The inaugural Sunway Sitges International Online Chess Open tournament runs April 19-27, followed by a day of quickplay playoffs among the top 16 players on April 28. The rounds start each day at 17:30 CEST which is 11:30 a.m. Eastern and 08:30 a.m. Pacific time. You can watch the top boards here.
You can call him crazy, or you can call him a genius. Oskar Stober Blázquez might be both, but he's definitely a pioneer.
The organizer of the Sunway Sitges chess festival, held every year in December in his hotel, has been strongly impacted by COVID-19, with his hotel being closed and with Spain having one of the severest lockdowns of all countries.
And yet, he thought about chess players and the fact that they cannot play over-the-board chess anymore. Stober wanted to organize a "real" tournament for them, and he wanted to hold it soon, while people were still being confined to their homes.
