The London Chess Classic Starts Friday
The inaugural season of the Grand Chess Tour concludes this month with the London Chess Classic. As with the Norway Chess and Sinquefield Cup legs earlier this year, the nine "official" tour members will once again compete, along with a tenth (Mickey Adams) chosen by the organizer. As the pairings have already been set, I'll list the players and their ratings in the course of giving the round 1 matchups:
- Veselin Topalov (2803) - Anish Giri (2784)
- Alexander Grischuk (2747) - Hikaru Nakamura (2793)
- Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (2773) - Magnus Carlsen (2834)
- Fabiano Caruana (2787) - Levon Aronian (2788)
- Viswanathan Anand (2796) - Michael Adams (2737)
Who will win? Carlsen's results have been very poor this year (by his standards, obviously), while Topalov, Anand, Aronian, Nakamura, Caruana and Giri have all had reasons to feel optimistic based on their performances in 2015. (MVL has been on an uptick lately as well; so on paper only Grischuk and Adams count as outsiders - theoretically speaking. But a case can be made for them as well: it wasn't so long ago that Grischuk was over 2800, while Adams is a very reliable player with tons of experience in top-level chess and the benefit of playing in his home country.)
I have no idea whatsoever as to who to pick, so I'll forego the possibility of bragging about my correct predictions at the end of the tournament. I'll leave the prognostications to all of you! One thing you might want to keep in mind is that the Candidates' tournament isn't that far away, so it's already possible that some of the players will be keeping their best material under wraps. (Topalov, Anand, Nakamura, Aronian, Caruana and Giri are all participating in the Candidates.)
Reader Comments (4)
I hope Carlsen turn the trend around
1. Carlsen
2. Nakamura
3. MVL
What an amazingly powerful lineup with only two of the top ten not participating. Only Adams and MLV have not reached the 2800 level in their careers.
I will go with an upset because Carlsen just doesn't seem motivated right now. Also I would not be surprised to see Aronian finish in the top three, but with this field he will need a little luck. Many of the other top ten, because of the candidates, will be happy with draws and hopes to get a point or two from whoever is having a bad tournament. I pick Topalov because he seems to be at his best when playing the best.
1) Topalov
2) Nakamura
3) Carlsen
Of course I would like to see Anand win the tournament in order to get some (irrelevant but of course exciting) "momentum" heading toward the Candidates. At this point I may be the only person looking forward to Carlsen-Anand III, but I think that in retrospect we may give that matchup more credit than it has been given in its own time.
It may not be quite Kasparov-Karpov, but it is the best we are likely to get for some time.
If only they still had 24 game matches.
Anyway, for this tournament, some predictions because predictions are fun:
Topalov +3 =6
Giri +2 =7
Carlsen +3 =5 -1
Anand +2 =6 -1
Nakamura, Aronian, Caruana on some kind of even score
Grischuk minus 2
MVL minus three
Adams minus three
Anish Giri can make it. If he fails I guess Aronian has good chances.