After three exhausting weeks of play, to say nothing of all the pre-match preparation, it wouldn’t have been surprising if Ding Liren and Ian Nepomniachtchi found an excuse to drop out of the first Grand Chess Tour event of the year. To their credit, they’re playing in the tournament, the Superbet Chess Classic, which begins on Saturday. (Opening ceremony on Friday.) Will they play terribly from exhaustion and from a lack of motivation (the tournament is comparatively irrelevant compared to the match they just finished)? Or, on the other hand, will their leftover prep and their having played into peak form be what matters?
Here’s the full field, in rating order:
Ian Nepomniachtchi (2794)
Ding Liren (2789)
Alireza Firouzja (2785)
Anish Giri (2768)
Fabiano Caruana (2764)
Wesley So (2760)
Richard Rapport (2745 - Ding’s main second!)
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (2742)
Jan-Krzysztof Duda (2724)
Bogdan Deac (2700)
Predictions?
It was such a pleasure to see Caruana's incredible calculating abilities during the WC commentary. I hope we see him back to his peak powers. He's lost quite a lot of rating since being the clear world #2 for a long time. Has he ever offered an explanation of that?