European Individual Begins in Rijeka

Many leading European players will be in Croatia for the next fortnight competing for places for the World Cup, prize-money and of course the title of European Champion!
Former Women's World Champion Bulgarian Antoaneta Stefanova is top seed in the Women's event.

Rijeka in Croatia is the venue for this year's European individual which takes place from the 6th to the 19th of March with a more-or-less classical time limit (90' for 40 moves followed by 30' for the rest of the game, with an increment of 30" for each move).

The 11 round championship event is doted with excellent prize-money (120,000 Euros for the men and 60,000 Euros for the equivalent Women's touranment) so not surprisingly a strong field has been attracted. In the Men's 95 players are rated higher than 2600 of which 9 are 2700+. In the Women's event 35 players have 2400 or more, with eight of this being 2500.

There are probably no other events in the world calendar with such strength in depth.

Here are the leading names:

Seed	Name	Nationality	Rating	World Ranking
1	Zoltan Almasi	HUN	2720	23
2	Etienne Bacrot	FRA	2714	26
3	Sergei Movsesian	SVK	2709	29
4	David Navara	CZE	2708	31
5	Francisco Vallejo Pons	ESP	2708	30
6	Alexander Motylev	RUS	2705	32
7	Michael Adams	ENG	2704	33
8	Evgeny Tomashevsky	RUS	2701	36
9	Evgeny Alekseev	RUS	2700	37
10	Baadur Jobava	GEO	2695	40
11	Arkadij Naiditsch	GER	2691	41
12	Vladimir Akopian	ARM	2688	43
13	Andrei Volokitin	UKR	2687	45
14	Viktor Bologan	MDA	2684	49
15	Fabiano Caruana	ITA	2680	52
16	Gabriel Sargissian	ARM	2675	53
17	Igor Kurnosov	RUS	2674	54
18	Alexander Areshchenko	UKR	2670	57
19	Laurent Fressinet	FRA	2670	56
20	Kiril Georgiev	BUL	2669	58

So fifteen nationalities in the top twenty seeds, which makes it a very open-looking contest.

Many of the World's top twenty will soon be competing in the 'Melody Amber' rapid and blindfold tournament in Nice, so the circumstances are ideal for a slightly less well-known player to make a name for themselves.

Seed	Name	Nationality	Rating	Women's World Ranking
1	Antoaneta Stefanova	BUL	2555	4
2	Nadezhda Kosintseva	RUS	2554	5
3	Anna Muzychuk	SLO	2533	6
4	Tatiana Kosintseva	RUS	2524	7
5	Pia Cramling	SWE	2523	9
6	Marie Sebag	FRA	2506	12
7	Lilit Mkrtchian	ARM	2503	13
8	Lela Javakhishvili	GEO	2500	14
9	Natalia Zhukova	UKR	2492	17
10	Elina Danielian	ARM	2491	18

The second and fourth seeds are sisters, a reminder of the Polgars' era a generation ago when all three sisters were active and played at a high level.

Of the World's top three, Judit Polgar doesn't play in Women's events and Humpy Koneru (India) and Yifan Hou (China) aren't European.

The biggest name who is conspicuous by her absence is Alexandra Kosteniuk of Russia, who apart from having already scaled the heights, is also a young mother!

More information on the official tournament site