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Carlsen wins Grand Chess Tour Leuven

by André Schulz

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6/20/2016 – In Paris, at the first leg of the Grand Chess Tour 2016, Hikaru Nakamura was able to get the better of World Champion Magnus Carlsen. But at the second Grand Chess Tour tournament 2016 in Leuven Carlsen came back with a vengeance. He showed an impressive performance in the second part of the blitz tournament and won the event convincingly.

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The old city of Leuven

An gorgeous playing venue for a top tournament: the old city hall
in the center of Leuven

Ornate roofs...

...and facades

The entry to the chess tournament

The city of Leuven in Belgium and its fantastic old city hall offered a splendid venue for the second leg of the Grand Chess Tour. Over four days the world's best players showed their skills in rapid and in blitz chess. World Champion Magnus Carlsen won both tournaments even though he expressed some dissatisfaction with his play in an interview with Maurice Ashley at the end of the tournament.

With several teams of commentators the tournament was excellently presented and could be followed live on the internet.

Quiet before the round...

Tournament director Malcolm Pein

At the beginning of each tournament day the players sat down
among the spectators and waited until Malcolm Pein introduced then one by one.

Veselin Topalov

Vishy Anand

Wesley So

Vladimir Kramnik

Magnus Carlsen

Anish Giri

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

Fabiano Caruana

Hikaru Nakamura

The tournament venue

Carlsen and Nakamura met in the last round and Carlsen was already clear first
but encounters between these two are always exciting.

Caruana had some trouble against Anand but escaped to a draw

Final standings Blitz

All blitz games

Jennifer Shahade and Yasser Seirawan were commentating the games from St. Louis

Maurice Ashley was present in Leuven - here in an interview with
Garry Kasparov who paid a surprise visit to Leuven.

Sunil Weeramantry and Kris Littlejohn follow the games of Hikaru Nakamura

Winning is fun - and put Magnus Carlsen
in the mood for letting fans take pictures

Maurice Ashley with the winner of the Grand Chess Tour Leuven 2016

Congratulations!

Final result of the Grand Chess Tour Leuven 2016

The next GCT tournament is not that far away

All rapid games

Photos: André Schulz, Grand Chess Tour

Links

Tournament page Grand Chess Tour...
Grand Chess Tour on Twitter...
Tournament page Leuven...

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André Schulz André Schulz started working for ChessBase in 1991 and is an editor of ChessBase News.

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