The six super-GM invitees to the London Chess Classic are Fabiano Caruana, Viswanathan Anand, Vladimir Kramnik, Anish Giri, Hikaru Nakamura and Michael Adams, and they will be playing in three events with three different time controls. The first is a 10-round rapid tournament over the weekend, and that's an open event with not only other professionals but even amateurs participating. That starts about five hours from now, at 6 a.m. ET/1 p.m. local time in London. Come Monday, they'll play in a blitz event to determine the pairing numbers for the classical tournament, which will start on Wednesday and run a round a day through the tournament's end next Sunday.
Fun questions to ask: will Caruana manage to stay ahead of Magnus Carlsen on the rapid rating list? (He currently tops the list, but only by three rating points.) Will Anand continue his generally strong play from this year, or will he be deflated from the loss to Carlsen? And will he feel some extra motivation to "punish" Adams for the latter's being one of Carlsen's secret seconds? How will Kramnik and Giri fare on the heels of their play in Qatar? The answers are coming soon...