Alexander Khalifman and Boris Grachev, Among Others, Will Play in Nakhichevan

The website extratime.az reports the Azerbaijani team, except Teimour Radjabov who will be playing in the Candidates that time, will have a 10-day training session (March 20th-30th) in Baku. The following players will take part in the training: Rauf Mamedov, Eltaj Safarli, Gadir Guseinov, Vasif Durarbeyli and maybe Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. Alexander Khalifman the former FIDE world champion will be their coach for that period.

Alexander Khalifman will help him in his work

Rauf Mamedov, who has given an interview for the Russian version of our website in the evening of February 12th, had learnt just a few minites before going on the air that he was among the players invited to the second Gashimov Memorial. That has become a total surprise for the reigning Azerbaijani champion:

The annual Nakhchivan Open in memory of Heydar Aliyev will take place in Azerbaijan from May 1st to May 10th, 2015.

The announcement about the final team composition from Azerbaijan for the forthcoming Olympiad in Istanbul is postponed again. The site extratime.az reports that the team's captain Vladimir Tukmakov will decide on the five players nearer the time of the team's training camp, which will start on 18 August.

Alexander Khalifman is a coach of World champion Anna Ushenina. This information was announced by Mr. Faik Gasanov, Azerbaijan chess federation vice president.

Three Swiss-system tournaments with the classical time control will be held within the Aeroflot Open-2015 which is re-launched in Russia this year as Chess-News has already reported. The highlight will be the A-tournament open for players with Elo 2550 or higher. The playing dates are March 29th - April 6th, with all the rounds of the tournaments A and B beginning at 15:00 Moscow time. On April 7th, the open blitz tournament will be held (Swiss system, 9 double rounds).

In the interview (in Russian) to Chesspro the former FIDE World Champion Alexander Khalifman paid a tribute to both participants of the World Championship match and confessed that he was supporting Boris Gelfand of Israel. "He did well! He's a hero of the month and the year. I completely empathize with him.