The Chess Mind

I've mentioned this tournament twice today (here and here), on account of Hikaru Nakamura's participation (which led him to take a couple of byes at the World Open). Now it's time for a few more details.

First, the where and when: it runs from July 7 (Tuesday) through the 16th, in San Sebastian, Spain (a city best known to chess fans for Jose Capablanca's legendary debut in international competition back in 1911). Next, the line-up:

Peter Svidler (2739)
Ruslan Ponomariov (2727)
Sergei Movsesian (2716)
Hikaru Nakamura (2710)
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (2703)
Francisco Vallejo Pons (2693)
Rustam Kasimdzhanov (2672)
Julio Granda Zuniga (2647)
Anatoly Karpov (2644)
Pablo San Segundo Carrillo (2570)

It should be an interesting tournament. The players are diverse in age, rating, style, repertoire and location; all of which generally encourages a bigger fight. It's nice to see Karpov playing against strong opposition, but unless he has been working with a trainer or has started to seriously use computers, I'm not too optimistic. (One can hope, though.)

Finally, the tournament website is here.