Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik and Anish Giri – the world’s current top three – start their campaign to conquer the Qatar Masters in Doha today, but that’s far from the only chess action on the menu. The European Rapid and Blitz Championship reaches its climax in Minsk with the likes of Baadur Jobava, Nigel Short and David Navara still fighting for medals, while the Christmas Nutcracker tournament in Moscow sees Boris Gelfand, Peter Leko and Alexander Morozevich take on some fearsomely talented young Russians.
Vladimir Kramnik is no longer the top star in town! | photo: David Llada, Qatar Masters Open
There’s usually a lull in top-level action over Christmas, but not this year! The 9-round Qatar Masters Open runs from 20-29 December and has a single rest day on Christmas Day itself. The field is mouth-watering. It was tough to build on the line-up that featured last year, but including the World Champion Magnus Carlsen wasn’t a bad start! The addition of the likes of Wesley So and Sergey Karjakin also did no harm, while if we get lucky we may see Magnus play his first game against the player some have marked out as his successor, 16-year-old Chinese wunderkind Wei Yi.
Vassily Ivanchuk will get the chance to continue on from his impressive rapid chess exploits in Berlin and Ashdod | photo: David Llada, Qatar Masters Open
Sometimes it's hard to be a photographer:
But on the other hand, you can introduce your daughter to the women's no. 1!Hou Yifan is the hot favourite to take home the women’s $8,000 first prize, while $27,000 is on offer for overall first place. She won't have it all her own way, though. The Round 1 pairings remind us that 17-year-old Russian Champion and future World Championship contender Aleksandra Goryachkina is also playing - since she faces Wesley So in the day's biggest Super-GM vs. top women's player clash:
Magnus secured the white pieces in Round 1 with a little help from a magician at the opening ceremony, as you can see in Vijay Kumar's video:
The organisers have brought in none other than chess24’s own Peter Svidler to commentate alongside Alexander Ramirez – and you can watch the commentary with the best game viewer in the business both here on chess24 (click a game above) and on the official website.
Morozevich, Leko, Gelfand and co. look on as Daniil Svidler takes centre stage | photo: Eteri Kublashvili/Vladimir Barsky
Peter isn’t the only talented Svidler in action this Christmas, though! His son Daniil gave a piano recital at the opening ceremony of the now traditional Nutcracker Battle of the Generations tournament in Moscow. You can watch that from about 13:20 onwards (Matvey Glukhovsky plays first):
World Championship runners-up Boris Gelfand and Peter Leko, European Champion Evgeniy Najer and the inimitable Alexander Morozevich will face off against Russian Cup winner Ivan Bukavshin (20), World Junior Champion Mikhail Antipov (18), 2014 Russian Junior Champion Grigoriy Oparin (18) and the top-rated Russian junior Vladislav Artemiev (17).
Ian Nepomniachtchi made it back from China - of which more later - to play some friendly games at the opening. His opponent here is Artemiev | photo: Eteri Kublashvili/Vladimir Barsky, Russian Chess Federation
The players play a classical game against each member of the opposing team and then, on Christmas Day itself (the Russian Orthodox Christmas is later), they play two rapid games against the same opponents. You can watch all the games live with high quality video (and Russian commentary) here.
While that all starts today the European Rapid and Blitz Championships in Minsk are coming to an end. The Blitz Championship featured over 600 players and a punishing schedule of 11 double-rounds (22 games) in a single day, with Nigel Short and Alexander Motylev throwing in the towel after six bruising rounds. The eventual winner was Azerbaijan’s blitz specialist Rauf Mamedov, who won his final match 2:0 to finish on 18/22. He didn’t lose a single mini-match and fittingly only failed to beat the two players who joined him on the podium, Boris Savchenko (also 18/22) and Alexander Riazantsev (17).
The Rapid Championship has an even more crowded 759-player field, but although it includes household names like Nigel Short, Laurent Fressinet and Baadur Jobava the line-up has a little less star power than in recent years. That’s partly down to the lure of the Qatar Masters, but there was also a more amusing story behind one absentee. Dmitry Andreikin was in the initial line-ups and would have been one of the favourites, but instead he found himself in China to represent Russia in a match. “Represent” is the key word, since he didn’t actually get to play any games.
He and Ian Nepomniachtchi, like Evgeny Tomashevsky and Alexander Morozevich before them in July, simply provided moral support for Sergey Karjakin, who completed a 5:0 demolition of the Chinese team by beating Wang Yue. After the classical game was drawn Sergey won both blitz games, though Wang Yue really should have forced Armageddon from an overwhelming position in the second:
Wang Yue just needed to move his king, but 35.Bf1?? Qd4+! 36.Kg2 Rxb1 was game over - after 37.Rxb1 there's 37...Qe4+, picking up the rook. Check out all the games here.
Karjakin told Sport Express:
If the first part of the match consisted of four games, then in the second I managed to fly to China for the sake of only a single classical game, although China could theoretically have won. I’m not going to pretend it’s not very nice for me to have beaten currently the best team in the world 5-0. On 19th December, in an excellent mood, I’ll set off for an open tournament in Qatar.
As you can see, his mood got no worse when he arrived in Qatar!
But back to the struggle in Minsk. The favourites made much smoother progress in rapid chess, and after day one Baadur Jobava had a perfect 7/7. He was joined by Tigran Petrosian, who defeated David Navara in a tempestuous final encounter on Day 1, while Nigel Short beat Alexander Motylev in the final round to end only half a point off the lead.
Alexander Motylev could see the funny side of his loss to Nigel Short
There are only four rounds on the final day, which leaves little margin for error… unfortunately for Jobava and Short in Round 8! The early morning start saw local hero Sergei Zhigalko beat Short, while Tigran Petrosian took the sole lead on 8/8 after Jobava carelessly grabbed a pawn on g6:
30…Rxf6! 31.Rxf6 Qxh4+! 32.Kg1 Qxf6 was the end of the Georgian no. 1’s perfect start.
Watch and replay all the action below:
Update: Ivan Popov was the surprise winner on 10/11 after keeping a low profile until a great 4/4 finish. Hrant Melkumyan took silver on 9.5 while Vadim Razin was third with 9. As you'll have noticed, taking the lead early was a mistake! 
Jobava started the last day with three losses, Short lost two games, Petrosian ended with two draws and a loss. Full results
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