8th London Chess Classic

Fabiano Caruana broke the draw streak in London and has now started a new streak of his own after beating Vishy Anand to claim a second win in a row. That puts him a full point clear of the field, since none of the other players has managed a single win so far. MVL’s attack suddenly ran out of steam against Levon Aronian, while Magnus Carlsen was frustrated by Wesley So in the longest game of the day. The players now have a rest day to rediscover their taste for blood!

See also:

• Official website
• All the games on chess24: London Chess Classic | British Knockout Championship | FIDE Open
• Chess world converges on London
• Carlsen and Kasparov in clash of the GOATs
• London Classic R1: Kasparov loses bet against draws
• London Classic R2: Dracarys!
• London Classic R3: The Anish Giri Cup
• London Classic R4: Caruana ends the curse

The 2016 London Chess Classic will be the eighth edition of the World’s most prestigious Chess Tournament and will climax the 2016 Grand Chess Tour.

The winning formula of elite 10 player all play all, chess festival, conference and free school events will take place once again. The GCT players and wild cards will be announced in early March.

The 8th London Chess Classic will attract players of all levels to London as well as chess educators, spectators, and children just beginning to learn the game. I hope that by publicising the dates to the chess world over nine months in advance, other organisers of chess events will be able to avoid a clash of dates which would not be in the interests of the top players and the chess public at large.

The London Chess Classic will begin with the Pro-Biz cup on Thursday, December 8th with round one beginning the following day. The tournament concludes on Sunday 18 December.

For more information, visit www.londonchessclassic.com

LCC 2015 and GCT 2015 winner was Magnus Carlsen

To adapt Gary Lineker’s famous football quote (and not for the first time): chess is a simple game. The players play longplay, rapidplay and blitz and in the end Magnus Carlsen wins.

The final day of the London Classic had the lot – a mind-numbing, eight-hour extravaganza of chess in three different formats, brilliant moves, crazy strategies, outrageous slices of luck – and somehow you just knew that Magnus Carlsen would come through it all to snatch first place in the tournament and in the inaugural Grand Chess Tour. He did so and deserves the plaudits.

The final day of the London Classic had the lot – a mind-numbing, eight-hour extravaganza of chess in three different formats, brilliant moves, crazy strategies, outrageous slices of luck – and somehow you just knew that Magnus Carlsen would come through it all to snatch first place in the tournament and in the inaugural Grand Chess Tour. He did so and deserves the plaudits.

But let’s also hear it for his co-stars in the last-day drama – Alexander Grischuk, Anish Giri and Maxime Vachier- Lagrave – who deserve to share some of the winner’s stardust.

London Classic, final scores: 1. Magnus Carlsen 5½, 2. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 5½, 3. Anish Giri 5½, 4. Levon Aronian 5, 5-7. Alexander Grischuk, Fabiano Caruana, Michael Adams 4½, 8. Hikaru Nakamura 4, 9. Viswanathan Anand 3½, 10. Veselin Topalov 2½.

London Chess Classic

Wesley So has won the 2016 London Chess Classic and taken his Grand Chess Tour earnings to a whopping $295,000. All he needed to complete his triumph was a rock solid draw against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave since Fabiano Caruana got nothing against Anish Giri and in fact flirted with disaster. Hikaru Nakamura finished second in the Grand Chess Tour, 11.5 points and $150,000 behind Wesley. The day’s entertainment was provided by Veselin Topalov, whose sacrifice finally paid off against Levon Aronian.

The London Chess Classic has been a hugely enjoyable event but the final round was something of an anti-climax, saved only by Veselin Topalov’s never-say-die attitude!

Wesley So summed up that winning in London was his “best achievement ever”, but he pointed out himself that it had all happened in the second half of the year, since before then he’d been “going just around normal”. His fourth place in Paris and distant second to Carlsen in Leuven gave little hint of what was to follow, while on the July 2016 rating list he was ranked 11th in the world at 2770.

In hindsight a significant date was July 16th, when Wesley was crushed in 26 moves by Carlsen in the Bilbao Masters. He didn’t lose another classical game all year:

Bilbao Masters (Round 5 onwards): 6 games, +1
Sinquefield Cup: 9 games, +2
Olympiad: 10 games, +7
Isle of Man Open: 9 games, +4
London Chess Classic: 9 games, +3

Total: 43 games, +17

Such a run of form and dominance of a big series of events inevitably started talk about Wesley’s potential, with some high praise for the US no 2. You can watch all the interviews on the live coverage, including Vishy’s:

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