Saturday
Jan142017
ChessBase's 2016 Player of the Year: Wesley So
Saturday, January 14, 2017 at 2:41AM
Wesley So gets ChessBase's vote for player of the year, an achievement I'd concur with as well. Still, Magnus Carlsen had a lot of success last in 2016 too, even if it wasn't a banner year by his lofty standards. Interestingly, in the ChessBase piece Carlsen gets kudos for the game of the year, the endgame of the year, and the move of the year. Not bad at all!
tagged Wesley So
Reader Comments (1)
Carlsen won Tata far ahead of So, Bilbao far ahead of So, was ahead of So also in the rapid and blitz events both played, won Norway Chess and the title match apart from that. So had a couple of very impressive results as did Karjakin with the Candidates and blitz World Championship plus well played title match. A question of taste who the player of the year was, I suppose. That it wasn't a banner year for Carlsen in spite of his winning every classical tournament he played (plus a title match) says a bit about how high the demands are on him.
[DM: Yes, Carlsen had some very good results, though I wouldn't call the match with Karjakin one of them. (He achieved the most important thing, which was keeping his title, but it wasn't impressive.) Still, Carlsen lost points over the year. And So had had three great results at the end of the year in addition to the solid ones in the first half of 2016: the Sinquefield Cup, the London Chess Classic, and the Olympiad.]