The 2015 Slava Memorial Cup will be held at the Savoy Hotel in Moscow (Russia) from February 20-22.
The event comprises two events: the Teams tournament and the Pairs tournament The team tournament will consist of 10 teams which will be personally invited by the Organizing Committee. The pair tournament will consist of 36-44 pairs, of which no more than 1/3 will be admitted by invitation of the Organizing Committee. The number of participants in the pair tournament could be increased by special decision of the Organizing Committee.
The Slava Cup is one of the greatest European bridge tournaments. This event is in memory of Slava Grinuk (1970-1999). Four years ago Vladimir Ivanov told Neapolitan Club the story:
“He was an ordinary bridge player from Moscow. He died young of cancer, and his friends, who were not bridge players, decided that the best thing they could do to commemorate him was to establish an annual tournament bearing his name. They were rather wealthy so they sponsored the event. It started as a small Russian tournament, but in a few years became am international event. Now it is the most prestigious tournament held in Russia. The touching part of the story that those guys are still sponsoring it despite the fact that they don’t know the first thing about bridge”.
These are the 10 invited teams:
- Sweden: : Fredrik Nyström, Johan Upmark, Krister Ahlesved, Jonas Pettersson, Tommy Bergdahl, Niklas Warne (Sweden)
- Israel: Ilan Herbst, Ophir Herbst, Dror Padon, Alen Birman (Israel)
- Germany: Alexander Smirnov, Josef Piekarek, Sabina Auken, Roy Welland (Germany)
- Monaco: Pierre Zimmermann, Henri Fissore, Jean-Charles Allavena, Fulvio Fantoni, Franck Multon, Claudio Nunes (Monaco)
- Zaleski: Andrea Manno, Massimo Lanzarotti, Romain Zaleski, Arrigo Franchi, Massimiliano Di Franco (Italy)
- Poland: Apolinari Kowalski, Jerzy Russyan, Piotr Gawrys, Piotr Tuszynski, Golebiowski, Adam Zmudzinski (Poland)
- Vitas: Vytautas Vainikonis, Wojtek Olanski, Lotan Fisher, Ron Schwartz, Bohuslav Gerulsky, Jerzy Skyzypczak (Lithuania/Poland/Israel)
- Real: Andrei Gromov, Sjoert Brink, Bas Drijver, Michael Krasnoselskiy, Alexander Dubinin, Eugene Gladysh (Russia/Netherlands)
- Bulgaria: Borislav Svetoslavov Popov, Georgi Kolev Karakolev, Vladimir Roussev Marashev, Ivan Borislavov Tsonchev (Bulgaria)
- Stoichkov: Witold Plum, Paul Sparrow, Vadim Holomeev, Ivan Semenov, Erikas Vainikonis, Andrew Arlovich (Russia/ Lithuania/ Belarus)
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