Viswanathan Anand
Magnus Carlsen
Vassily Ivanchuk
Veselin Topalov
Levon Aronian
Teimour Radjabov
Radjabov completes field in Bilbao
16 June 2008 18:28 PM
By Chessvibes
Levon Aronian, Viswanathan Anand, Vassily Ivanchuk, Magnus Carlsen, Veselin Topalov and Teimour Radjabov will be the six participants of the first Grand Slam Tournament, held 1-13 September 2008 in Bilbao, Spain. This was confirmed today by organizer Juan Carlos Fernández.
The first three participants of the Grand Slam Finals were known for a while already, because these are the winners of the Grand Slam 2008 tournaments: Corus, Wijk aan Zee (Aronian), Morelia/Linares (Anand) and M-Tel Masters, Sofia (Ivanchuk). Magnus Carlsen and Veselin Topalov had joined the field as the two wild cards.
The full article from Chessvibes is here.
I will be there to do commentary with my good friend Leontxo Garcia of the giant El País newspaper. We did commentary together at the World Championship in Mexico City last September. He is absolutely one of the best commentators in chess.
Strong event, average (virtual) rating is over 2770! On the virtual list it is the world top 7 minus Kramnik and Morozevich, plus Aronian.
Would this be a strongest FIDE tournament ever? (Category 22?)
Why is Anand playing a proper classical tournament so close to the world championship? Is he crazy!?
Does Kramnik still play chess?