The third Gashimov Memorial starts May the 26th at 7AM EDT - 13:00 CEST. ICC will relay the games and provide its members with the Game Of the Day service:  Alex Yermolinsky Larry Christiansen, Joel Benjamin, Max Dlugy, John Watson, Christof Sielecki, John Fedorowicz, Voja Milanovic, Ronen Har-Zvi will recap each round in a video.

The first two editions were won by Magnus Carlsen, who will not be in Shamkir this year to defend his title, due to his preparation for the World Championship Match. Nonetheless, the line-up is quite impressive: Fabiano Caruana  USA 2804  Anish Giri   Netherlands 2782   Pentala Harikrishna  India 2763 Pavel Eljanov  Ukraine 2750 Sergey Karjakin  Russia 2773  Hou Yifan  China 2663 Teimour Radjabov  Russia 2726 Shakhriyar Mamedyarov  Azerbaijan 2748 Eltaj Safarli  Azerbaijan 2674  Rauf Mamedov  Azerbaijan 2655

Born on July 24th, 1986 in Baku, Vugar Gashimov was a chess wonder, unfortunately only for too short a time. He achieved great successes in his short career, including victories in Athens in 2005, Cappelle-la-Grande in 2008, the fantastic triumph at the European Team Chess Championship in Novi Sad in 2009, alongside Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Teimour Radjabov, Rauf Mammadov and Gadir Guseinov, and the Italian oldest chess tournament in Reggio Emilia in 2011. Despite his illness, Vugar peaked at 2761, #6 in the World. Since his premature death, in January 2014, the city of Shamkir has organized an annual super-tournament in memoriam.