It seems as if the elites of the chess world only play classical chess when it’s a world championship qualifier, a national championship, Wijk aan Zee, the Sinquefield Cup, or the Olympiad. It turns out that it’s not quite that bad - yet - and the WR Chess Masters in Dusseldorf, Germany is a happy exception. This ten player single round robin started on Thursday with an impressive field. The highest rated players are the veterans, relatively speaking: Ian Nepomniachtchi, Anish Giri, Wesley So, Levon Aronian, and Jan-Krzysztof Duda. They are facing off against some of the top youngsters in the game: Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Dommaraju Gukesh, Vincent Keymer, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, and Andrey Esipenko.
After two rounds there has been plenty of blood. In round 1 there were three decisive results: So beat Duda, Aronian beat Pragg and Esipenko ground down Keymer in 101 moves. In round 2 there were two more wins, with Abdusattorov defeating Esipenko in a nice attacking game (but it was shocking that Esipenko allowed the attack in the first place) while Pragg misplayed his own attack against Gukesh and lost. Half the games have had a winner, and in every case it was the player with White.
The games, with my comments to three of the wins, are here. Here are the pairings for round 3:
So (1.5) - Gukesh (1.5)
Nepomniachtchi (1) - Giri (1)
Esipenko (1) - Duda (.5)
Aronian (1.5) - Abdusattorov (1.5)
Praggnanandhaa (0) - Keymer (.5)
It isn't even as bad as Dennis described it (I agree with him that it would be bad). Among supertournaments, there will also be Superbet (part of the Grand Chess Tour like Sinquefield Cup) and Norway Chess (where even Carlsen, who predicts/wants that classical chess will be "phased out", is likely to play). This year will also have the revival of Qatar Open (Carlsen already committed), in a way replacing Gibraltar like WR Chess Masters replaces Grenke Chess.
Maybe not noticed internationally, many top players also play in the German Bundesliga (also against "lesser GMs"): from this tournament Abdusattorov, Duda, Esipenko and Keymer (Aronian and Giri are on the Baden-Baden lineup but rarely play), other world-top players are Mamedyarov, Rapport and Vachier-Lagrave.
On the other hand, "national championship" might be the US perspective: in other countries, top players often skip their national championship as it isn't a supertournament and doesn't provide the conditions they normally ask and get.