Christopher Kreuzer wrote:Clive Blackburn wrote:Pairings for Round 1:-
1 GM Aronian Levon 2809 - GM Carlsen Magnus 2872
2 GM Gelfand Boris 2740 - GM Radjabov Teimour 2793
3 GM Ivanchuk Vassily 2757 - GM Grischuk Alexander 2764
4 GM Svidler Peter 2747 - GM Kramnik Vladimir 2810
My predictions... (I should base this on those Chessbase articles and form, but I'm going with gut feeling here): Aronian to draw with Carlsen, Radjabov to beat Gelfand, Ivanchuk to beat Grischuk, and Svidler to hold Kramnik. Though looking again at the line up, I'm reminded of how strong all the players are, and how almost all results are possible in all games (though in some you would expect the 'stronger' player to hold a draw with ease). What I'm wondering, with an event of this length, is how many short-ish draws there might be? Hopefully not many, but there could be some.
Well, just use the stats from Chessbase and ignore the commentary, I would say. I was startled to see them suggest that Carlsen would be disappointed to have just under 50% against Aronian
as Black, including a number of games from many years ago.
Shortish draws? This is the Candidates; as the other Jonathan says, there is no prospect of an invitation back at the whim of the organisers; the field is much more even than at LCC or Wijk aan Zee; past such events have tended to see lots of draws. Prepare for some small measure of disappointment.
San Luis was the exception (and Mexico the norm) in my view, and that is largely because the field was uneven at San Luis (Polgar and Kasim stood out as "come out and get me!") and you had a certain Mr Topalov (not to mention Morozevich) playing.
