Besides the prize fund of 140,000 Euros, the Aeroflot Open provides a ticket to the Dortmund supertournament later this year. The 2018 edition saw Vladislav Kovalev comfortably taking clear first place, which was followed by shared second place in Dortmund. These remarkable performances got him an invitation to this year’s Tata Steel “B group”, which he won convincingly, getting an invitation to the 2020 Tata Steel Masters. The Byelorussian patiently climbed the ladder from Aeroflot to Wijk aan Zee’s main event.
The Open is tough, however, and it would be rather surprising to see Kovalev repeat last year’s feat. After all, he will arrive in Moscow as the fourth seed — curiously, two other participants share his 2703 rating.
Kovalev next to Korobov during last year's edition | Photo: Niklesh Jain
The favourite rating-wise is 19-year-old Wei Yi. The youngster won the Chinese Championship three years in a row, between 2015 and 2017, and has already faced world-class opposition in tournaments like the Bilbao Masters and the Tata Steel Masters. Before Ding Liren’s rise in the world ranking, Wei Yi was considered the biggest hope for Chinese chess to get a World Championship contender. Of late, he has not participated as frequently in top events —nonetheless, he got first place in his last classical tournament, the Asian Continental Championship.
Second seed is Vladimir Fedoseev, who won the 2017 edition, when he was ‘barely’ the 18th seed. The Russian’s last tournament was the Tata Steel Masters, where he finished on a disappointing 5/13 — he defeated Shankland and Radjabov, and missed a big chance to take down world champion Magnus Carlsen. Back in 2017, he got a fine win over Maxim Matlakov, a game that was analysed by Alex Yermolinsky for Chessbase:
Another Chinese star is placed third in the starting rank list — Harbin-born Wang Hao. The 29-year-old took a shot at elite chess roughly between 2010 and 2014, with his best performance achieved at the 2012 Biel Chess Festival, where he got clear first place ahead of Magnus Carlsen, Anish Giri and Hikaru Nakamura. He started well in the latest World Rapid Championship but could not keep up the pace and finished on 9½/15.
Tied with Kovalev and Rauf Mamedov with a 2703 rating is Daniil Dubov. The 22-year-old Russian recently got the biggest achievement of his career when he took clear first place at the aforementioned World Rapid Championship. During his great performance in Saint Petersburg, it was widely revealed — although some people already knew — that he had helped Magnus Carlsen during his preparation for last year’s London match against Fabiano Caruana.
The current rapid world champion, Daniil Dubov | Photo: Lennart Ootes
Besides the usual strong 2600-players — Inarkiev, Nabaty, Korobov, etc. — a group of future stars will be looking for their big break. Parham Maghsoodloo is the current world junior champion; Alexey Sarana already participated in a Russian Superfinal; Alireza Firouzja will try to continue his accelerated rise; and Andrey Esipenko will arrive in Moscow after a strong performance at the Tata Steel Challengers. And these are only a few…
In addition to the 9-round Swiss classical open, a blitz tournament will be organised on February 28th, with a prize fund of 20,000 Euros — the winner will take home 5,000 Euros. It will be a double nine-round Swiss event with a time control of 3 minutes for the whole game and 2-second increments from move one.
Esipenko finished shared second in Wijk aan Zee's "B group" — surely he wanted more | Photo: Alina l'Ami
