London Closing Ceremony

The London Super Sixteen rapid tournament has ended. The main event of the London Chess Classic took place from December 11th to December 15th at the Olympiad Conference Center in London, England. The tournament brings together many of the best players of the World as well as two qualifiers from the Open section of the London Chess Classic.

Closing Ceremony

The closing ceremony took place at Simpson's-in-the-Strand (above). This is one of London's oldest traditional English restaurants, known as the Grand Cigar Divan when it opened in 1828. It developed from a smoking room to a coffee house, and finally achieved dual fame for its traditional English food, particularly roast meat, and as the most important venue in Britain for chess in the nineteenth century.

As is now traditional, the players teamed together in a simultaneous exhibition, alternating moves. For those that have not tried this type of chess before, it is incredibly complicated. In many ocassions the grandmasters, not knowing exactly what the previous player was trying to do, will simply undo the move and the plan that had just been played!

Nakamura sharing a joke with one of the tables. Each table had its own
board and the grandmasters would walk around moving the pieces.

Caruana is still firmly in theory. The table he is playing against might not be as much.

Questions are always welcome. Gelfand ponders if he should answer truthfully...

This table in particular had a slightly higher rating average than the others. Somehow it was missing a chess set, though.

No matter, the players always find a board to blitz it out in anyways. Clockwise starting from bottom left: Caruana, Howell, Nakamura, Ali Mortazavi, and McShane. Ali Mortazavi (the only non grandmaster in the picture) is the director of corportate strategy for Silence, one of Nakamura's sponsors.

Gawain Jones with his wife WIM Sue Maroroa. They decided not to change names
to FIDE to avoid confusion. The example of WGM l'Ami and GM l'Ami comes
as an example of how confusing changing names can become...

Boris Gelfand and Vladimir Kramnik flank Tereza Pribanova

Not all chess sets are created equal. This is a special luxury set created by Purling London.

The strongest woman in the history of chess and Jason Kouchak, an internationally acclaimed pianist, composer and singer-songwriter whose works, interests, public contributions and charitable associations span the world including the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Tania Sachdev played in the FIDE open with a good result,
while Lawrence Trent provided amazing commentary throughout the tournament

Malcolm Pein, the man in charge of it all, gives Hikaru Nakamura his prize

FIDE Open

The FIDE open was led by Istatescu and Sutovsky with perfect 4.0/4, but since they were bumped up to the Super Sixteen rapids the way was paved for other players to win the event. After everything was said and done the young and talented Norwegian GM Jon Ludvig Hammer, one of Carlsen's seconds, was the winner with 7.5/9. He finished with an important victory against Abhijeet Gupta in the final round to clinch his first prize.

The tournament was very hard fought, for proof just look at how the last round ended:

Final Standings

Women's Invitational

Irina Bulmaga, the top seed fo the event, in front of the London Eye

Her sixteen tournaments this year must have tired her out, as she was
rather out of shape in London. However she will be back in full strength
for the Graz Open in February. You can follow her adventures on her blog.

The women's section was narrowly won by Dagne Ciuksyte from England ahead of Veronica Foisor, the youngest of the Foisor family of players.

Special thanks to Ray Morris-Hill for providing all the photography during the event.

A London based professional photographer specialising in Chess, Portraits, Sports, Fashion and Wildlife. He has published pictures in The Times, The Guardian, "Коммерсантъ", Digital Photographer, Esquire, Time Out, Drapers, 220 Triathlon, Peón de Rey, Chess Life, British Chess Magazine and of course, Chess and www.chessbase.com. His main career has been as a marketing consultant for home shopping companies in the UK. However, in the last four years, as his photography business has grown rapidly, more of his time has been taken up behind the camera.

Super Sixteen Results

Semi Final matches:

Quarter Final matches:

Group Stage results

Photographs by Ray Morris-Hill

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games will be broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.