Sinquefield Cup Recap

2015 Sinquefield Cup This super-GM single Round Robin brings together some of the best players in the world. This is the second leg of the Grand Chess Tour. The players – Magnus Carlsen (Norway), Levon Aronian (Armenia), Fabiano Caruana (USA), Hikaru Nakamura (USA), Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria), Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France), Alexander Grischuk (Russia), Anish Giri (Netherlands), Viswanathan Anand (India), Wesley So (USA). The venue is the Chess Club and Scholastic Center at 4657 Maryland Avenue, Saint Louis, MO 63108. Tickets can be purchased at the Saint Louis Chess Club.

Recap

"It is the land of opportunity!". Maurice Ashley asked Levon Aronian during the opening ceremony about his chances in the Sinquefield Cup. The Armenian could not have been more correct!

The 2015 Sinquefield Cup had an amazing start, and even though the games in the end were considerably longer and had a higher draw ratio, the drama was always there.

The happiest man from this tournament has to be, without a doubt, Levon Aronian. It isn't only that he won the tournament, but he has finally bounced back from over a year of mediocre to bad results. He started the tournament with a brilliant win and he never let go:

Interestingly, all of the Armenian's victories came against Americans. Despite the high hopes of the locals for one of the three American players to succeed, the best performance was by Nakamura who managed +1, while So and Caruana finished last and antepenultimate, respectively.

It is unusual that a player wins an event a full point ahead, especially in this caliber of event, but that is what happens when a total of four players finish with a +1 score.

Despite disappointing results in the last half of the tournament, where Carlsen should have scored one more point than he did, the World Champion was able to clinch second thanks to his superior tiebreaks. Carlsen's draw against Nakamura was certainly a let down as he was basically winning at some point, but a huge hallucination caused him to erroneously trade rooks in an endgame, letting his opponent have enough counterplay. Another difficult to explain result was the following:

Some interesting facts about the events so far:

• Aronian beat every American player and no one else (in Norway he only beat Caruana).
• Giri has not lost a game in the Grand Chess Tour.
• Anand was the only player not to win a game in Saint Louis.
• Aronian's score in Saint Louis would only have been good enough for a tie 2-4 in Norway.
• Both Wildcards have finished last, though Jon Ludvig Hammer was only last due to tiebreak.
• Nakamura has finished third in both tournaments due to tiebreak: in both he has tied for second.
• There were as many 3.Bb5+ Sicilians as Najdorfs in Saint Louis.
• The Spanish had two white wins, two draws and three black wins.
• The only player to lose with 1.d4 was So, who lost against Aronian and Nakamura.
• Carlsen, Nakamura, Grischuk and So all had five decisive games.
• Out of the five 2800s in the World, only Nakamura and Carlsen finished in the top half at the Sinquefield.

Out of the melee of rating changes, Nakamura emerges as the #2 player in the World

Closing Ceremony

The closing ceremony was a short and private event. No big Grand Chess Tour announcement for 2016 was made, besides the dates of the events. There was a short Q&A session towards the end.

Levon Aronian with his trophy. Next to him (from left) are
Major of Saint Louis Francis Slay, Jeanne and Rex Sinquefield

Aronian's speech was rather motivating!

The deserved winner in Saint Louis

Some of the players took a flight straight to Baku, where they will be preparing for the next big event: the World Cup which starts next week!

Standings

Grand Chess Tour Standings

*rank refers to the rank before Saint Louis

Despite the fact that Topalov was only seventh in Saint Louis, his win in Norway keeps him in the lead. If Topalov, Nakamura or Aronian win the London Chess Classic without the need for a tiebreak, they guarantee themselves the Grand Chess Tour victory. Every player is still in contention for the title!

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Photos by Austin Fuller

Pairings

Games start at 1 p.m. local time (20:00h CEST, 22:00h Moscow, Thursday 12:30 New Delhi, 03:00h Tokyo, 04:00 Canberra – check your location here).

Playoffs, if necessary, will be on the 2nd at 1pm.

The games will be broadcast live on Playchess, with expert analysis (see schedule below).

Broadcast Schedule