Anyone interested in / is littlefish willing to do the standings? The first round is Saturday, July 14th, and the participants are Kramnik, Caruana, Karjakin, Ponomariov, and Leko, making this a pretty strong cat. 21 tournament (average rating 2760). Personally, I am looking at Karjakin to win, after his strong showing in the World Rapid. Kramnik had a pretty mixed Tal Memorial, but maybe he will pull it together for this one.

We can have a contest if a couple of people are interested. But isn't the category much lower than 21 with 4 German players (Naiditsch, Gustafsson, Fridman, Meier) plus Bartel participating? That's why I thought Dortmund isn't particularly interesting for a contest this year, so I was planning to have the next one for Biel, which is also starting soon. But if we get some predictions for Dortmund I can do the standings.

I thought I can make a prediction if Saturday was the start but went to look at the player's rating and realized the first round was over! With the lone win, Meijer is leading after first round. Unless I looked in in some page that had previous year results.

You are right: that snoozerfest has already started. Meier of Webster University fame beat Bartel.

I wonder if Georg Meier will play the Rubinstein variation of the French in this tournament. I guess there would be only about two chess ninjas delighted by that...

I'm glad I didn't miss this one.

Of course I would have won the contest. My Fabulous Fab won the tournament!!


photo by Georgios Souleidis

I would have lost—Meier just played the Steinitz variation of the French...