This time the festival in Bastia was especially great. Bearing in mind that the participants of the world championship in rapid chess were to take part there, the organizers held a preliminary tournament with 'accelerated' time control - 50 minutes per game, 10 seconds increment per move - for the 'ordinary' players, for those ones who did not play in the final at Cap d'Agde.
The tournament has gathered 234 players, Alexander Motylev was the first - 7.5 points out of 9. Grandmasters V.Milov, O.Korneev, L.Van Wely, K.Shashikirian, A.Kogan and M.Gurevich scored for a half point less.
The master-open was intended to select 16 best players for the following knock-out competition. It was much stronger in its composition since all of the participants of the Cap d'Agde tournament played there. The time control was 10 minutes per game plus 5 seconds per move. Everybody played with excessive care, even Anand, which ended with an unbelievable result - the places 1-19 were shared with the score 6.5 points of 9! Smirin, Blatny and Lobron had to leave the tournament due to worse coefficients.
All the players qualified had ratings above 2600-2700, apart from M.Cebalo whose rating was even below 2500! Cebalo's will of win was 'awarded' - he was seeded to play against Anand in 1/8-final. That is all about his performance.
Motylev also qualified but failed already in round 1.
[Topalov-Motylev]
Karpov beat Van Wely, M.Gurevich beat Shashikirian, Lautier beat Epishin, Grischuk beat Radjabov and Shirov beat Tkachiev. The two latter matches lasted for six games and ended only after the blitz games with the same score 4-2. It took Gelfand four games to knock out Aronian.
[Gelfand-Aronian]
In the ?-final Topalov beat Gurevich, Grischuk beat Gelfand and Anand beat Lautier with the same score of 1.5 - 0.5. Shirov yet managed to prevail over Karpov after a protracted struggle: 3.5 - 2.5. In his last blitz game tired Anatoly blundered a not especially complicated tactical struggle.
[Karpov - Shirov]
In the semi-final, Anand beat Grischuk for the third time with the same score 1.5 - 0.5, while Topalov prevailed over his eternal offender Shirov, 2.5-1.5.
[Topalov-Shirov]
In the starting game of the final match, Topalov failed to realize the two extra pawns. The next three games were drawn. In the fifth game White tried to win a roughly equal rook ending.