London Chess Classic 2011

Pictorial report by Frederic Friedel and John Saunders

A welcome dinner given by the sponsor, with Kris Littlejohn (Nakamura's second), Hikaru Nakamura,
Andrew Finan (organiser), Luke McShane, Levon Aronian, Peter Davis, Henrik Carlsen, Magnus Carlsen

On the opposite side: Malcolm Pein (organiser), Kyvelli Short, daughter, Nigel Short,
Vladimir Kramnik, Vishy Anand, Tara Adams, IM Ali Mortasavi, Michael Adams

Incidentally Vladimir Kramnik has a very dry sense of humour, and is one of the very few Russian players with a repertoire of genuinely good jokes – good as opposed to jokes that leave you staring at the teller in bafflement. At the dinner he treated us to the following example which had everyone cracking up – and at least one 2800+ player close to hysterics. It goes like this: A kid is asked how he would like his life to end. "I would like to die like my grandfather," he said, "peacefully in his sleep – and not like all those people in the bus he was driving, yelling and screaming in terror." It took a some of us a couple of tellings before we all caught it. But typical Vlady.

On Friday the press conference at the Olympia Centre: David Howell, Luke McShane, Michael Adams,
Levon Aronian, Vishy Anand, Malcolm Pein, Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik, Hikaru Nakamura, Nigel Short

The players were asked questions, both from the people assembled in the room and spectators on the Internet who had sent their questions earlier. Elite GMs can often be reticent about saying too much before the tournament and this was no exception, but they responded well to a few of the light-hearted questions. One of this year’s innovations is to have an odd number of players. OK, not totally unprecedented in itself but the novelty is to require the ‘bye’ player to join the commentary team for the day. It so happens that Nigel Short will have the bye in the very first round, so he will be the elite commentator to start the tournament. He is also scheduled to play a fun game with star guest, former Wimbledon champion Boris Becker.. Boris has ‘form’ as a chessplayer, having played Garry Kasparov, opening 1.e4 e5 2.Qh5!?. “Ah, he hits the ball over the net,” the former world chess champion is alleged to have said. Today a questioner suggested that, since Boris has a broken foot, Nigel ought to take the opportunity to play him at tennis as well.

Mindful of what was coming next in proceedings, a questioner asked the panel about their attitude to Twitter, Facebook and other social websites, with Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura and Levon Aronian being the only players in the line-up to tweet so far. Mickey Adams took the microphone to answer: “You haven’t done your research properly,” he replied. “I joined Twitter this morning!” He acknowledged the technical support of his wife in so doing. So, as well as the website, followers of the tournament might like to make a note of the players’ Twitter sites, to see if they make any comments as the London Classic unfolds - @magnuscarlsen, @GMHikaru, @LevAronian and @MickeyAdamsGM.

Chief organiser Malcolm Pein between the Big Four 2800+ players

Three of the four "Brits": David Howell, Luke McShane and Michael Adams

Two players who need no introduction – their name cards are perfectly aligned

Video recording of the press conference

Vladmir Kramnik and his wife Marie Laure, with their daughter Daria

Twitter game

After the press conference came a new departure - a chess game on Twitter. Billed as London Chess Classic versus the World - the strongest chess game ever held on the medium (and it would be to argue with all those 2800 ratings), it was really just a bit of funny. Nobody quite knew how it would work out but in fact it was great fun. At least, it was good fun for the grandmasters, who entered into the spirit of the thing and bantered happily together as they plotted world destruction. A very good ice-breaker: perhaps all tournaments should start with this pleasant diversion, allowing the players to warm up a bit with the crowd. Maybe they should do this at tennis too – invite people from the crowd to knock up with the players for a few minutes. We can ask Boris Becker what he thinks tomorrow.

The Twitter game is under way, after Boris Becker had made the first move (1.e4)

The super-strong team of GMs ponder the next move

The end of the Twitter game captured in the final moves:

The timetable of the 2011 London Chess Classic

Pairings of the London Chess Classic 2011

For clarification: As the lowest rated player has pairing number 7, according to the tournament regulations, the round this player has the “bye” has been moved to be played as round 9.

All games start at 2 p.m. or 14:00h British time = 15:00h CET, 17:00h Moscow, 7:30 p.m. Chennai, 22:00h Beijing, 01:00 a.m. Melbourne, 03:00 a.m. Auckland (sorry Murray!), 6 a.m. San José, 9 a.m. New York. You can check your location here. Naturally the games will be covered live on the official web site (below) and on Playchess. Stand by for further details on Saturday. The games of the final round start two hours earlier.

Links

• Official tournament site
• All ChessBase reports on the Chess Classic 2011
• All ChessBase reports from 2010 and from 2009