Who will win the London Classic?

Last week’s poll “What’s the matter with Magnus?” ended in a narrow win for “Lack of Motivation” but “Nothing – it’s variance” seemed in the lead for most of the week. Clearly, opinions vary on this question.

Poll-Magnus

This week, big time chess returns to the UK, with the London Classic kicking off on Friday. So an obvious question: Who will win the 2015 London Classic?

Maybe Magnus will show his true power? There are ten stars to chose from, and no weak links in this all-play-all. Note the names are listed with their pairing number: 1-5 will get five Whites, while 6-10 will get only four, just in case that affects your deliberations.

1. Veselin Topalov
2. Alexander Grischuk
3. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave
4. Fabiano Caruana
5. Viswanathan Anand
6. Michael Adams
7. Levon Aronian
8. Magnus Carlsen
9. Hikaru Nakamura
10. Anish Giri

There are plenty of other interesting competitions in London in addition to the Classic, in particular the lavishly-funded British Knockout Chess Championship. My pick of the first-round clashes would be Scottish Number 1 Jonathan Rowson against Quality Chess author Gawain Jones.

Nigel Short unfortunately had to withdraw from the Knockout; his replacement, GM Nick Pert, mentioned that even if he was knocked out in the first round, the £2500 he would win would still be his biggest ever chess prize.

The Knockout games start at 10.30 am on Tuesday.

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