SS Manhems GM tournament - Introduction

Just like last year, SS Manhem from Gothenburg organizes Grandmaster tournament as part of their chess week.
It will be played a few more tournaments for lower rated players.
The tournament will be played in Gothenburg´s Chess Centre and one of the participators in this event will be the writer of this lines.
It will be played in form of 9 rounds round robin tournament with 4 Grandmasters, 4 International Masters , one FIDE Master and one player without title.
Average Elo rating of participators will be 2475 and average rating of my opponents will be 2485 Elo.

All useful information about tournament you can find on their website SS Manhem and specific information about tournaments you can find on following link : SS Manhem GM tournament . All games from GM tournament will be transmitted live.
I am very thankful to the organizers for sending me an invitation for 2012 , and I have to say that I played in Gothenburg even in 2011. It was one of my best results in 2011 (Absolutely best were Prague Open and Swedish Elitserien, both with performance 2600+). My performance against very hard opposition was 2510 and I have to say that I was very unlucky (or just bad) in some games (missed forced wins against Richter and Carlhammar, and forced draw against Berg while in the rest of my games I had no problems whatsoever.).
I do not know what can I expect this year, as my form is not as good as in 2011.
However, there are clear reasons for that ( the biggest one is completely new opening repertoire, which needs time to be adopted).
This year I adopted a quite different strategy in my preparation for the tournament.
Of course, it would be stupid to write about my opening preparation, but some general stuffs in overall strategy can be revealed.
While last year I did not play any tournaments after The Bosnian Team Championship (which is always in the beginning of June), in order to save energy and prepare good for the tournament, both by sharpening my tactical abilities which I did by solving huge number of combinations and by preparing some new lines in my opening repertoire, this year I decided that I do not need so much time for rest and that I already worked on my openings enough during 2012 ( of course that I have some interesting ideas which will be used in Gothenburg or sometime ).
What I did in the means of tactical sharpening was that I played two open tournaments ( 119th Scottish Ch. in Glasgow and Politiken Cup in Helsingör). It can help me more than pure solving of combinations as this years edition of the tournament is 7 days long (it will be two double rounds) and I think that one has to be in the playing process to play on  his maximum.

What is a difference between open and closed tournaments?

I got this question many times, and it was not so easy to answer.
I played in closed tournament about 20 times. The team competitions can be counted when you play all the time on the same board, and all of your opponents are always on same board (as Danish or Bosnian league). That competitions has same characteristics as closed tournaments.
The biggest difference is that you already know who will you play against, and your average rating does not depends on your results.
In open tournaments, if you lose one game you can get easier opponent, and if you play badly you can count on some lower rated players which you can win against and recover from bad form. There is not such thing in closed tournaments. If you miss a win or a draw, you missed a win or a draw, there is no things as "at least I can get easier opponent tomorrow". The second difference is that in closed tournaments all opponents are usually rated around you, so you can just play chess objectively without "must win" pressure as in open tournaments. 
Third, a draw with Black is almost always good.
Fourth, if you are in bad form in the beginning, everyone wants to win against you.....
All in all, closed tournaments are more serious than open tournaments.
When I think just about closed GM tournaments, than this tournaments will be my fifth.
I played two times in Marianbad, one time in Lund and one time in Gothenburg.
Every four times I had 5 times black pieces and four times white pieces.
Will this be changed?

Players

Here is a list of players who will play in the tournament in rating order:

• GM    Tomi Nybäck                E2638
• GM    Eduards Rozentalis      E2585
• GM    Emanuel Berg              E2576
• GM    Hans Tikkanen             E2570
• IM      Thomas Henrichs         E2493
• IM      Daniel Semcesen         E2463
• IM      Viktor Nithander           E2438
• IM      Jasmin Bejtovic            E2393
• FM     Anton Frisk Kockum    E2329
•          Mats Welin                   E2270

Most probably is that I will not publish any news during the tournament, but as this tournament is the real test of my current abilities I will devote much time on analysis of my games and one part of that will be published on this blog.