The II Paul Morphy in Memoriam Fast Match Friendly Stop will take place on Saturday, June 25, 2022 in the Leonor Pérez Cabrera Reference Room of the José Martí National Library of Cuba (BNCJM).

Convened by the BNCJM and the Latin American Higher Chess Institute (ISLA), the competition will take place within the scope of the sixth edition of the Open Library space, which has systematically incorporated actions related to chess.

In the team match, the players who represented the José Martí National Library Team will face off, and the young promises of Cuban chess who defended the ISLA Infantil 1 and ISLA Infantil 2 teams at the XIV Ibero-American Universities Chess Festival AJEDUNI 2022.

The competition will be officiated by AF Merquiades Quintana Mesoner and the MSc will act as captains of the respective groups. Amado René del Pino and the WGM Vivian Ramón, as happened in the first edition of Tope.

The contest, agreed to 8 boards and 4 rounds of competition, will allow the two teams the possibility of alternating the order of the boards and incorporating substitute players according to the Scheveningen system.

The fight will have a rhythm of play of 25 minutes plus 10 seconds of bonus per move and the individual results will be computed for the Fast ELO ranking of the International Chess Federation.

The results of each round will be published in real time through the page chess-results.com.

In the I Tope, held on May 28, 2022, the BNJM team won against its ISLA counterpart, 27 ½ points to 20 ½, after 6 rounds of competition.

The two competitive actions intend to create a permanent space for chess in the successive editions of the Open Library, as well as to strengthen the institutional ties between the BNCJM and the Sports University.

This tournament pays tribute to the American master Paul Morphy (1837-1884) -considered the first modern chess player- by commemorating in 2022 the 185th anniversary of his birth (New Orleans, June 22, 1837) and the 160th anniversary of his first visit to Cuba (October 17, 1862), which until then was the greatest milestone in the history of Cuban chess.

Read Paul Morphy, a prodigy who lost the game against his ego

The figure of Morphy was also the central motif of the magazine El Pablo Morphy (1891-1892), the most important Cuban publication devoted to chess during the 19th century.

At the end of the 19th century, Havana used to be visited by the most important players of the time: Paul Morphy was here twice, and two matches for the world championship were also held in the Cuban capital –1889 and 1892– between the Austrian Wilhelm Steinitz and the Russian Mikhail Chigorin.

(With information from the José Martí National Library of Cuba)