For 2012 and 2013, a round-robin blitz tournament was held in order to decide the pairings for the main event with time control of 3 minutes plus two seconds per move.
In 2014, the classical part did not take place and the Tal Memorial became solely a blitz tournament with the time control of 4 minutes plus 2 seconds per move in a double round robin of twelve players.
Jobava, Karjakin (both — 12 points out of 18), Radjabov, Jakovenko, Bologan and Timofeev (all — 11½ out of 18) qualified as the winners of 40-players 9-round (two games per round) qualification tournament taken place 16–17 November 2006.
Grischuk, Movsesian (both — 12½ points out of 18), Grachev, Karjakin and Eljanov (all — 12 out of 18) qualified as the winners of 60-players qualification blitz tournament taken place 27–28 August 2008.
Many of the world's top players participated: in order of Elo rating, Levon Aronian, Vladimir Kramnik, Alexander Grischuk, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Sergey Karjakin, Pavel Eljanov, Boris Gelfand, Hikaru Nakamura, Alexei Shirov, and Wang Hao.
Magnus Carlsen, Viswanathan Anand, Levon Aronian and Vladimir Kramnik; all four rated 2800+ at the time of the tournament participated.
Seven out of the world's top ten players participated in the tournament, and its average Elo of 2776 (Category 22) was at the time the highest in history.
[10] The Tal Memorial 2013 took place from 13 to 24 June 2013, with participants Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik, Viswanathan Anand, Hikaru Nakamura, Sergey Karjakin, Fabiano Caruana, Alexander Morozevich, Boris Gelfand, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, and Dmitry Andreikin.