Cuba's top chess players to compete in US Masters

Cuban chess stars Grandmaster Yunieski Quesada and International Master Ayram Abreu will take part in the 2013 US Masters Championship, which begins Thursday in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Quesada will be the second-highest rated player at the competition, with an Elo rating of 2636 points, just five points below Azerbaijan's top-rated Rauf Mamedov (2641) and well above Germany's Geor Meier (2610), reports Xinhua.

Abreu, meanwhile, has accumulated 2483 Elo points, and will be competing against approximately 100 chess players in the same range.

The competition employs the Swiss system of nine rounds, with four of the five days of competition seeing competitors playing two matches.

For the Cuban players, the Masters tournament is one in a series of competitions they will be attending in the US.

So far, their best performance was at Chicago's chess tournament, where Quesada finished in second place and Abreu in third.