Who will win Wijk aan Zee?

Last week’s poll question was: Do you think your rating will go up or down in 2016? As the results below show, the winner was the most optimistic answer, just ahead of the slightly optimistic option.

Poll-ratingdirection

Overall, about two-thirds were optimistic about their rating. Is that surprising? I don’t think so. I suspect our blog readers (and poll-clickers) are not a representative sample of all chessplayers. If you bother to go to a chess book blog, you probably are more optimistic and interested in improving your chess than most.

Later this week an interesting range of tournaments starts in Wijk aan Zee. The top event, the Tata Steel Masters, is a 14-player all-play-all that features almost half of the world’s Top 20, including Carlsen, Giri, Caruana, So, Karjakin, Ding Liren and Eljanov. Who will win Wijk aan Zee 2016? “Others” could include the likes of Mamedyarov, Adams, Navara and Wei Yi. You can see a full list of players here.

Too easy a question? Well, the last time we had a “Who will win…” question was about the London Classic, and Carlsen just edged out Aronian on the vote. And you were most impressed by Giri in 2015…

 

20 thoughts on “Who will win Wijk aan Zee?”

  1. Meanwhile i hate to see the Shaw books in the list for coming soon, and that for years and years. Your commentary about their coming speaking with soon, John is ready and the announcing for December at the website on a german book dealer. I think its enough. Be quite about the coming. Greatings

  2. Got to go for Carlsen, it seems he has come out his recession and is in an upswing, I expect him to be back over 2860 after 3-4 events.

  3. Its unfair to laugh on qc schedule. They are the only publisher that communicate with their customers and publishe high quality stuff. Its childish to make moking states on them. I was considering to buy e5 book but bought french defence in bookstore. And Im very happy with it. Jacob and Ntirils wrote a nice book on this opening.

  4. In March 2014 the first Shaw book was announced for publication on May 28 alongside Negi’s first book….I often wondered since then why there was this sudden burst of optimism back then…..:-)

  5. Shurlock Ventriloquist

    I suspect that dates are announced when it does seem that they are reasonable targets and will be reached even with foreseeable snags. I also suspect a host of issues crops up, some foreseeable, some not, that complicate things.

    Not sure why this would be difficult for someone to consider and why instead they would suspect a conspiracy to upset the very people the company is trying to serve and profit from.

  6. Shurlock Ventriloquist :
    Not sure why this would be difficult for someone to consider and why instead they would suspect a conspiracy to upset the very people the company is trying to serve and profit from.

    Because it is so obvious! John and Jacob, both belonging to the Bavarian Iluminati, are conspiring to become world rulers and try to confuse their enimies with wrong publication dates.

  7. My comeback to chess was in the autumn of 2013 where I shortly afterwards made a vow; to start playing 1. e4. The idea was to get the nice two books which were “coming soon”. Well, in the meantime Marin’s 3 books on Enlish have been purchased and they are fantastic and suit my style perfectly. However, when the 2 “coming soon” books are published, I’ll buy them straight away to learn 1. e4 which must be a good move 🙂

  8. The “coming soon” time of the 1.e4 books teaches us how long it will last to build up an e4-repertoire based on the books if you’re hard working. 😉

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