If the slow chess of the U.S. Championship is not your thing, no worries: the next event on the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, the Aimchess Rapid, starts today (or tomorrow for those of you west of the Eastern time zone - i.e. Friday) at 12:30 p.m. ET. You probably all know the drill by now: 16 players fight in a round-robin preliminary to reach the knockout stage for the top eight. As usual, it is an elite field, with the following cast of characters:
Magnus Carlsen
Jan-Krzysztof Duda
Vincent Keymer
Anish Giri
Richard Rapport
Arjun Erigaisi
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov
David Anton Guijarro
Santosh Gujrathi Vidit
Pentala Harikrishna
Nodirbek Abdusattorov
Nils Grandelius
Eric Hansen
Daniel Naroditsky
Dommaraju Gukesh
Aditya Mittal
The players will play four games for three days, then three games on the fourth day to round off the prelims. The time control is 15’ + 10”, and we’ll have the fun of seeing whether Carlsen can continue to hold off the hungry lions of the current crop of super-teens. Predictions?