| Title | Name | Country | Elo | Result | Title | Name | Country | Elo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GM | Samuel L Shankland |
|
2701 | 1 - 0 | GM | Yusnel Bacallao Alonso |
|
2594 |
| 2 | GM | Alexey Dreev |
|
2653 | 1 - 0 | GM | David Anton Guijarro |
|
2646 |
| 3 | GM | Alexander Rakhmanov |
|
2635 | ½ - ½ | GM | Lazaro Bruzon Batista |
|
2664 |
Alexey Dreev was born in 1969 and had a long and successful career. 1983 and 1984 he was World Under-16 Champion and in 1988 he became European Junior Champion. Dreev was a student of the renowned coach Mark Dvoretsky and in 1990 he qualified for the Candidates. In 2016 Dreev shared first place with Baskaran Adhiban and Eltaj Safarli at the Tata Steel Challengers Tournament which Adhiban won on tie-break.
In round 5 of the Capablanca Memorial Dreev played against David Anton Guijarro and outplayed the young Spaniard right from the opening:
Sam Shankland was born in 1991 in California, USA, and is currently in the form of his life. In April he won the strong US Championship 2018 with 8½/11 (+6–0=5), ahead of players such as Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So, and Hikaru Nakamura. With this success Shankland for the first time in his life passed the Elo 2700 mark. At the Capablanca Memorial he is top seed and in round 5 he won an energetic game against Yusnel Bacallao Alonso.
