Qatar Masters Open
The Qatar Masters Open is an open chess tournament organized by the Qatar Chess Association in Doha, Qatar. Its first edition took place from 25 November to 5 December 2014.
Qatar Masters 2014
The tournament was open to every player with Elo 2300 or above. The prize fund equaled over $100,000, with $25,000 for the winner.[1] There were also prizes for the best female and Arabic players, 5,000 and 3,500 USD for the first place in each category, respectively.
Yu Yangyi, a 20-year-old Chinese chess prodigy, became the Qatar Masters Champion,[2] scoring 7.5/9; Anish Giri finished second and Vladimir Kramnik third, both scoring 7/9.
Place Prize[3] 1st $25,000 2nd $15,000 3rd $10,000 4th $7,000 5th $6,000 6th $5,000
Qatar Masters 2015
This was the second edition of the Qatar Masters Open, played from December 20th to December 29th 2015. The time control for each of the tournament games was 90 minutes for the first 40 moves plus 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move starting from move one. Tiebreak play offs consisted of a 2-game blitz match with time control of 5 minutes with 3 seconds increment per move starting from the move 1.
Magnus Carlsen was the winner of the tournament, scoring +5 (7 points out of 9) and defeating Yu Yangyi in the tiebreak. There was a 5-way tie for third place, amongst Vladimir Kramnik, Sergey Karjakin, Sanan Sjugirov, Ni Hua, and Vassily Ivanchuk. The Prizes for the 10 best players of the tournament were as follows:
Place Prize[4] 1st $27,000.00 2nd $16,000.00 3rd $12,000.00 4th $8,500.00 5th $7,500.00 6th $5,500.00 7th $4,500.00 8th $3,500.00 9th $2,500.00 10th $2,000.00
There were additional prizes for the best female players (ranging from $500.00 to $8000.00), best Arabic players (ranging from $1000.00 to $2500.00), top two Junior players, and special prizes in different rating groups.