Speaking of supertournaments, Wijk aan Zee starts on January 10. The annual beer and pea-soup festival will be without Kasparov for the second consecutive year after he won three straight. Last year he was sick; this year he'll be playing the program Deep Junior in New York. Kramnik wasted his entire 2001 waiting for his Fritz match, was it worth it? Now we lose 13 Kasparov games for six against a computer nobody will care about the day after. I'm starting to look forward to the day when computers are so strong humans won't have to waste their time playing them. Give it five years.
Ah yes, back to Wijk aan Zee. In Elo order: Kramnik, Anand, Topalov, Ponomariov, Bareev, Ivanchuk, Grischuk, Shirov, Karpov, J.Polgar, Krasenkow, van Wely, Timman, Radjabov. This will be Kramnik's first serious chess against a human in a year. Only two locals this year in a very strong event. Karpov will try to match his rapid chess success, Radjabov will try to break through, Timman, van Wely, and Krasenkow will try not to finish last. I bet you can't remember last year's winner! Hint: he's the fifth seed this year and is pictured above.
