Upcoming Chess Action: So-Navara, the Capablanca Memorial, and Norway Chess
Saturday, June 13, 2015 at 1:07AM A brief lull in the chess world comes to an end today (Saturday) as the first of three noteworthy events gets underway. On Saturday, Wesley So and David Navara begin a four-game match. Both players have been in a little slump lately, but it's still an attractive battle between two fighting players well into the 2700s.
That will keep up occupied through the weekend, and then on Monday the Capablanca Memorial starts in Havana. The Elite Group is a six player double round robin, with five of the six players rated over 2700: Leinier Dominguez, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Dmitry Andreikin, Pavel Eljanov, Yu Yangyi and (in the upper 2600s) Lazaro Bruzon.
Finally, the piece de la resistance is the Norway Chess tournament, which starts with a blitz tournament on Monday (for pairing purposes) followed by the main, classical event on Tuesday. Ten players are competing, including the world's #s 1-9 players excluding Vladimir Kramnik (i.e. Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Viswanathan Anand, Hikaru Nakamura, Veselin Topalov, Alexander Grischuk, Levon Aronian and Anish Giri), plus Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (he was at or near the top ten when the invite was made, but has since plunged to #27 in the world rankings) and local qualifier Jon Ludwig Hammer (#62) in the world. It's at least slightly scandalous that Sergey Karjakin isn't playing, as he is the two-time defending champion of the event, but whether it's a bit of bad luck, a function of Garry Kasparov's distaste for Vladimir Putin (Karjakin is unfortunately a fan of the Russian President, but in this context, so what?) or the Norwegian organizers' lack of interest in inviting the player who has ruined Carlsen's home tournament the last couple of years (or some combination of the above), that's how it is.
Three great events to look forward to - and if that's not enough Dortmund starts immediately afterwards, featuring players from all three tournaments just listed, plus Kramnik and Arkadij Naiditsch. (Naiditsch will surely be on a rampage, looking to regain some points after a mind-blowingly bad performance in the French League where he lost 32 points.)
Reader Comments (3)
There is even more:
Currently there is also a four-player rapid KO event in Leon with Vachier-Lagrave, Ponomariov (yesterday eliminated by MVL), Wei Yi and Anton Guijarro (playing each other today, Saturday). MVL coming +- straight from the French Team Championship will have just enough time to fly from Spain to Norway.
Starting May 20th [DM: June 20?], there will be a 10-player round robin in Edmonton with Ivanchuk, Harikrishna, Wang Hao (still existing), Shankland, Ganguly and five Canadian players rated 2110-2438.
As to Norway Chess: Whatever one thinks of Karjakin's (forced) absence [I am with Dennis that it is, if not scandalous, than at least strange], the organizers "added insult to injury" by inviting him to play the qualifying event. Minor detail: The qualifier coincided with the Khanty-Mansiysk Grand Prix where Karjakin was playing.
Karjakin was "invited" to play the qualifier but he understandably turned it down this insulting offer. Also, he is about 25 points ahead of MVL now, so the organizers do look a bit silly.
[DM: As Thomas points out in the previous comment, the qualifier also conflicted with the Grand Prix event Karjakin was already in.]
As I heard it, the qualifier preparations had already started when the Tour made the decision about the participants, and the Norwegians didn't want to skip their much publicised qualifier (with TV transmission, Carlsen as commentator, etc). Unlucky for Karjakin, but he has and will play many other top events.