The 10th and last player to join the line-up of the 8th London Chess Classic is none other than England’s number one, Michael Adams. The Cornishman has been the country’s leading player since 1999 and was once ranked number 4 in the world. Adams has consistently recorded outstanding performances and been a member of the world elite for the better part of 20 years. As recently as two weeks ago, Mickey was crowned British Champion in Bournemouth, outclassing the opposition and posting an impressive score of 10/11 that equalled the record set by Julian Hodgson in 1992.
Other highlights of his career include reaching the final of the 2004 FIDE World Championship and winning the Dortmund Sparkassen Chess-Meeting in 2013. This will be Adams’ eighth participation in as many editions and we can be sure he will yet again be eager to please the home fans with his trademark manoeuvring style, which once caused Kasparov to nickname him “spiderman”.
Below is the final line-up for the London Chess Classic, based on the August ratings. The field boasts a staggering 2782 rating average, which makes this a category 22 tournament.
| No. | Name | Country | Age | Rating | Ranking |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | France | 25 | 2819 | 2 |
| 2 | Vladimir Kramnik | Russia | 41 | 2808 | 3 |
| 3 | Fabiano Caruana | USA | 24 | 2807 | 4 |
| 4 | Levon Aronian | Armenia | 33 | 2792 | 5 |
| 5 | Hikaru Nakamura | USA | 28 | 2791 | 6 |
| 6 | Wesley So | USA | 22 | 2771 | 7 |
| 7 | Viswanathan Anand | India | 46 | 2770 | 8 |
| 8 | Anish Giri | Netherlands | 22 | 2769 | 9 |
| 9 | Veselin Topalov | Bulgaria | 41 | 2761 | 12 |
| 10 | Michael Adams | England | 44 | 2727 | 28 |
Seeing as the above list is based on the August ratings, the British Championship and Sinquefield Cup results are yet to be taken into account. Thanks to his incredible performance in Bournemouth, Adams added 11 points to his rating and is now up to world number 23 in the live list. Over in Saint Louis, Caruana leapfrogged Kramnik to move up to world number 3, while So, Anand and Topalov also gained some points thanks to their good results.
Top seed Maxime Vachier-Lagrave was the lowest rated player in the field in 2015. After his excellent summer performances – winning Dortmund with a 1.5-point lead over the rest of the field and convincingly beating Svidler in Biel – it will be interesting to see how Maxime fares in London, where he only lost out to Magnus Carlsen in the final play-off last year.
Apart from Levon Aronian and Vishy Anand, all London Chess Classic participants will be representing their respective countries at the Chess Olympiad, which starts in Baku in just ten days, and we wish them best of luck!
Fiona Steil-Antoni
Press Officer
1 Comment