The very strong Tal Memorial has finished seven rounds now, and former world champion Vladimir Kramnik is in the lead with 5.0/7. Just a half point behind are current world champion Vishy Anand and Vassily Ivanchuk.
After his 3000+ performance at Nanjing, Mangus Carlsen has been a bit of a disappointment with seven draws so far, but if he manages to beat one of his last two opponents, Peter Leko or Rusian Ponomariov, he'll at least survive the tournament with his 2800 rating intact.
The high number of draws (74%) might be explained by the importance of rating to the top players in the world given that two spots in the 2010 Candidates tournament will be awarded on basis of rating alone (averaged between July 2009 and January 2010).
The eight candidates will be:
Top two players from FIDE Grand Prix:
Levon Aronian: 500 points, one event remaining
Teimour Radjabov: 363.33 points, one event remaining
Alexander Grischuk: 363.33 points, no events remaining
Wang Yue: 353.33 points, one event remaining
2009 World Cup Winner:
Loser of 2009 Candidates Match: Gata Kamsky
Loser of 2009 World Championship Match: Vishy Anand or Veselin Topalov
Top 2 Players in Rating, July 09, (Current)
Magnus Carlsen: 2772 (2797) AVG = 2784.5 (1)
Dimitry Jakovenko: 2760 (2725) AVG = 2742.5 (8)
Vladimir Kramnik: 2759 (2787) AVG = 2773 (2)
Peter Leko: 2756 (2743) AVG = 2749.5 (5)
Teimour Radjabov: 2756 (2738) AVG = 2747 (7)
Boris Gelfand: 2755 (2758) AVG = 2756.5 (3)
Alexander Morozevich: 2751 (2747) AVG = 2749 (6)
Vugar Gashimov: 2740 (2763) AVG = 2751.5 (4)
Nomination of Organizer (min 2700 FIDE)
A likely organizer of the Candidates tournament is China (they've recently taken interest in high-profile tournaments). If they win the bid, Yue Wang will likely be the nominee (unless Wang manages to get the second spot in the FIDE grand prix or win the 2009 World Cup)
So here's my guess for the eight spots (the World Cup is such a crap-shoot I'm not even going to seriously attempt to guess that.
Vishy Anand/Veselin Topalov
Gata Kamsky
Levon Aronian
Teimour Radjabov
Magnus Carlsen
Vladimir Kramnik
Yue Wang
Winner of 2009 World Cup.
Quite a strong tournament, which is now sounding like a knock-out event rather than a double-round robin, with quarter-finals and semi-finals matches of 4 games each, and the final a 6 game match.
It's a far from ideal system, but it's much better than having the whole world championship on a knock-out tournament.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment