Tata Steel Masters Starts Today (Updated)
Ding, Nepo, and a slew of youngsters headline the event.
It’s not the most interesting field that could have been assembled, as - for starters - it’s missing the #1, #2, and #3 players in the world: Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, and Hikaru Nakamura, respectively. The other two top Americans are also missing - world #7 Wesley So and world #8 Leinier Dominguez. A bit of good advice often given to book reviewers is to write about the book that was written, not the book one wishes were written or (in the reviewer’s opinion) should have been written, so let’s cheer up a bit and focus on what’s right about the event.
First, the 2023 World Championship finalists are back: champion (and world #4) Ding Liren, returning after a long hibernation and period of poor health, will play his first classical games since May*. Two-time World Championship runner-up Ian Nepomniachtchi (world #5) will look to get a measure of revenge and to announce to the other 2024 Candidates that he’s ready to fight for a third consecutive World Championship match.
The world #6 is also present: Alireza Firouzja, who just squeaked into his second Candidates tournament, is the leading youngster (he’s 20), but he’s hardly alone when it comes to the tournament’s youth movement. In descending order of age, there’s 19-year-old Nodirbek Abdusattorov, 18-year-old Candidate Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, and 17-year-old Candidate Dommaraju Gukesh. Another Candidate, Vidit Gujrathi is also playing, as is (world #10) Anish Giri, who barely missed out on the Candidates. That Parham Maghsoodloo and Wei Yi, both rated 2740 and not exactly graybeards (aged 23 and 24, respectively), are mentioned this late in the post is an indication of how strong the tournament is. (And were all the players listed in rating order, they’d have been #s 7 & 8, as they outrate Abdusattorov and Gukesh.)
After them, there’s a significant drop-off to the last four players. From Gukesh’s 2725 we go to Jorden Van Foreest, who was once 2715 (and the winner of this event in 2021; also still young at 24) but is currently sporting a 2682 rating. Next is Alexander Donchenko (2643, 25 y.o.), Max Warmerdam (2625, 23 y.o.), and finally long-time Women’s World Champion Ju Wenjun (2549).
The entertainment begins around 8 a.m. ET in the U.S., with these pairings:
Van Foreest - Firouzja
Warmerdam - Nepomniachtchi
Ju Wenjun - Giri
Vidit - Ding Liren
Donchenko - Wei Yi
Gukesh - Abdusattorov
Praggnanandhaa - Maghsoodloo
Who do you think will win? With Carlsen out and Ding extremely rusty, there is no obvious favorite. Maybe Nepo, but there’s the further factor that he (and Vidit, Firouzja, Gukesh, and Pragg) may be hiding prep for the Candidates. So if I have to pick, I’ll go with Giri, who has the added advantage of being Dutch and being at least more at home in Wijk than any of the other super-GMs.
*(Update - Initially I wrote that this was Ding’s first classical event since he won the title. I knew he had played in a rapid event after that, but forgot about Superbet, which was a classical tournament - see the comments. The error has been fixed.)
Carlsen, Caruana and Nakamura were all invited and, according to Dutch sources, declined. For Carlsen it's unclear how much classical chess (if any) he'll still play. Given reason by Caruana and Nakamura for declining was, according to tournament director Jeroen van den Bergh, candidates preparation. I wonder a bit who "replaced" those three players: Firouzja, having a grudge with the organizers, may have been approached/invited only at this stage. And maybe only then they came up with the idea of having a third Dutch player and Ju Wenjun - even more out of place in this field than Hou Yifan was at her time. Donchenko qualified by winning last year's Challenger event (now Niemann is top seed).
"Historically", a bad result in Wijk aan Zee was "needed" to win the candidates. I guess nobody did it on purpose, but Giri has "no such worries". The other one would be Abdusattorov, who came close to winning last year. What does 0/0 for Caruana and Nakamura mean for their chances at the candidates?
BTW Ding Liren did play Superbet Chess Classic directly after becoming world champion - it was a bad idea, he and Nepomniachtchi were struggling. Now I also mentioned the Grand Chess Tour which will generally have the strongest possible field thus largely lacking youngsters. But also for them, if, like last year, Carlsen (for the classical events) and Nakamura aren't interested, nothing they can do about it.