Monday
Aug022010
Shanghai/Bilbao Participants
Monday, August 2, 2010 at 11:24AM
The Final Chess Masters event, the finale of this year's Grand Slam, will take place in two stages. The first stage takes place from September 3-8 in Shanghai, and is a qualifier for the final in Bilbao, which runs from October 9 to 15. Vladimir Kramnik, Levon Aronian, Alexei Shirov and Wang Hao will battle it out in Shanghai, and the top two there go on to Bilbao, where world champion Viswanathan Anand and world #1 Magnus Carlsen await them. (Veselin Topalov also qualified for the event, but won't participate for unspecified "personal reasons".)
More here.
Reader Comments (5)
Wang Hao - currently Chinese #1 ahead of Wang Yue - will also play in Shanghai. Did you simply forget him, or do you think (probably correctly) that he has no chance to "battle it out" with Kramnik, Aronian and Shirov?
Just a mistake on my part...it will be fixed momentarily.
I really don't understand this tournement. You have most of the greatest players in the world and some of them have to play a preliminary event to qualify for the main event while two get byes.
It might be like Linares a few years ago, when they had part of it in Morelia, Mexico: it might be about spreading the expense. But who cares? Just enjoy the chess!
For sure Shanghai-Bilbao still is a strong event, or rather two separate ones. It just doesn't really deserve the label "Masters Final" any more. Making Shanghai yet another qualifier for Bilbao was the only half-logical way to get a Chinese player involved?
The most logical field would have been a six player double round robin - possibly split between both locations - with
- Carlsen as winner of Nanjing, Corus and Bazna
- Topalov as winner of Linares
- Kramnik and Shirov, shared second at Corus 1/2 point behind Carlsen
- Grischuk, second in Linares 1/2 point behind Topalov
- plus one wildcard (or two if Topalov declines the invitation) for Anand (world champion) and/or Aronian (winner Bilbao 2009)
If the organizers can afford eight players, Gelfand and Radjabov (shared second at Bazna, 2 points behind Carlsen) would be next in line - alternatively they could replace the wildcards.
In summary, Grischuk is left out and Wang Hao suddenly appears out of the blue (he didn't even play any of the prior qualifying events). Maybe Dennis has a point: Who cares?