Tuesday
Aug262014
2014 Sinquefield Cup: Round 1 Pairings
Tuesday, August 26, 2014 at 10:58PM
The full pairings are here; as for round 1, this is what we have to look forward to tomorrow (Wednesday):
- Levon Aronian - Hikaru Nakamura
- Veselin Topalov - Fabiano Caruana
- Maxime Vachier-Lagrave - Magnus Carlsen
Rather than ask for predictions (though you're all welcome to give them, especially if you think someone other than the champ will take first), I'll ask this: would you take Carlsen or the rest of the field?
tagged 2014 Sinquefield Cup
Reader Comments (9)
Prediction: The bold 1 and 0 of it
It's too easy to predict the winner of this tournament. If MVL scores 1 against 0 for Carlsen in Round 1, then MVL wins the tournament.
If Carlsen scores 1 versus 0 for MVL, then Carlsen wins the tournament.
If they split the point, then the player who wins the most games while losing the fewest games wins the tournament.
I'll go for the rest of the field, and since Karjakin isn't playing, I'll pick Caruana.
Well, Carlsen has the odds with him, compared to the rest.
Not overwhelmingly, but greater than 50%
Carlsen seems to be in a slight dump right now, but Carlsen's dumps are never very big or long lasting.
Apart from that, Carlsen seem to be a bit more easily than others struck by fatigue, and there is a lot of high quality play to be done and few breaks, so this will be very tough for him.
I think Vachier-Lagrave will be a very tough opponent for Carlsen. There is not a good win statistics Carlsen - Vachier-Lagrave, and I believe one of Carlsen's weaknesses is certain players that he has not played much against and has a week track record with.
But, as a Norwegian, I hope he can make a good tournament.
Go Magnus!
I'll take the field. Carlsen is immense but there are no weak links amongst his competitors, they are all potential winners and on balance I think they're somewhat favoured as a group.
That said, it wouldn't be my first time thinking "Well surely Carlsen can't be *THAT* dominant" and feeling silly afterwards. Looking forward to finding out!
I'll go for Aronian because it's not a Candidates tournament, or Caruana because he's been both consistently impressive and impressively consistent over the past year or so.
I am sort of rooting for Aronian, but I have an inkling that Caruana may take it. It should be fun, anyway.
Carlsen is a big favorite I think.
[DM: Well, yes, everyone thinks that. That's why I suggested making a prediction on Carlsen vs. the field.]
He loves to compete and will be highly motivated with this line up.
That will mean trouble for everyone, maybe even big trouble.
[DM: When is he not motivated?]
During the olympiad his motivation seemed a bit lower and he got a bit too careless against heavily lower rated players.
[DM: I'm not sure I agree. Carlsen does get into trouble in his games from time to time, but putting him away isn't always easy. Saric did a great job, and he isn't exactly a bum even if he's not at the Sinquefield Cup level. (Yet.)]
Winning that losing position didn't help with that attitude either, but all this shouldn't be a problem here.
Unless perhaps he reads the news about the pending doom with the match and gets angry.
Angry Carlsen will be even more likely to win ;-)
The choice between "Carlsen or the rest of the field" is easy: the rest of the field, all playing together in consultation against Carlsen, would be sure to win.
[DM: I wouldn't be sure about that: their combined analytical efforts wouldn't be additive, and the time spent organizing and communicating would take time and diminish their concentration.]
Most likely that's not what Dennis meant though, so I'll assume he meant "Will Carlsen win, or not?"
[DM: Very charitable of you to acknowledge the obvious meaning of my words. :)]
In which case I would bet on Carlsen, because he wins almost every tournament he plays in--or to put it more precisely: he's clearly the strongest player in the field.
I believe he did relatively poorly in the Olympiad because he faced non-elite players, which (as chess history has amply shown) has often been a stumbling-block for many an elite player. This is a bit ironic (after all, these opponents are lower-rated, i.e. weaker), but time and again we've seen this phenomenon play out, and I think it is one reason why elite players prefer to stay in elite events.
This is probably the most elite event of all time, and I see no reason why the player who is clearly strongest should not prevail.
I'm not a great Carlsen fan, but I would take him vs. the field in this instance, for the following reasons:
- my feeling is that he tends to win slightly more than half of the tournaments he participates in
- the 10 round double round robin format favours his chances, from both the statistical and the historical point of view
- he seems to have Topalov's and Nakamura's phone numbers, and he has also done well against Aronian of late, and while Caruana beats him somehow on a regular basis, Carlsen always takes this losses well, and has often found the energy to have the last word against him tournament-wise
- recurrent spoiler Karjakin does not play here
- I don't see any of his opponents sweeping the rest of the field to reach something like 7/10. I would not be surprised to see every player suffering at least one loss in this tournament.