Dear Participants
Greetings from and welcome to Norway!
We are happy to see all of you on our list of players for the upcoming Fagernes International April 2 to April 9, and look much forward to meeting each one of you at Fagernes. This will be our biggest tournament so far, and also by far the most global one with players from more than 20 different countries. We welcome this year in particular many long-travelling new chess friends from India and other countries in Asia.
Fagernes by the way is a town/village with about 2000 inhabitans, placed 360 meters above sea level in the Valdres region. Distances to Oslo and Oslo Airport both are around 185 kms.
The Fagernes tournament in 2023 is non-commercial: All work is done for free and we have no sponsors. Deficits are paid by the chief organizer and our goal is to produce a memorable high-quality tournament for the players without an unacceptable deficit.
For this 2023 tournament we will give big thanks to the FIDE Aid Package Program for their financial support. We are also very happy and proud to see that our tournament this year is included in the new FIDE circuit. Following this Fagernes International is for the first time qualifying for the next FIDE World Championship cycle.
Thanks a lot also for all practical help to our hard-working friends in the office of the Norwegian Chess Federation and to IM Eirik Gullaksen in Bergen for his great job with the tournament webpage at https://fagerneschessautumn2022.blogspot.com/
To organize a high-quality international chess tournament, you first need a very good playing venue and then a wise time schedule. A very good playing venue was more than ten years ago found inside the Scandic Valdres hotel at Fagernes, with postal address Jernbanevegen 26, 2900 Fagernes. All games in both the GM Group and the Open Group again will play together in a big venue in the basement of the hotel (downstairs from the hotel repection and hotel restaurant). Coffee and ice water will be available for free outside the playing venue during the playing sessions.
Around 90 players are expected for the GM group and just below 50 for the Open. We plan to to transmit live, with a 15-minute delay, all games from the GM group and top 12–15 games from the Open. All games in the GM group and Open Group will be published at the tournament webpage.
Our detailed round reports have been an important part of the Fagernes tradition and will continue this year. You can find the round reports from our last tournament at https://fagerneschessautumn2022.blogspot.com/p/bulletins.html. With an expected 45 games each round in the GM group, we will however reduce the length and details of each game a bit this year.
Our hopefully wise time schedule can be found by using this link.
Best regards
IA IO Hans Olav Lahlum
Organizer
