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Journalism of Courage
Despite a clutch of several elite players participating at the Tal Memorial in Moscow,a lot of attention will once more be directed towards the form of World Champion Viswanthan Anand and contender Magnus Carlsen. This will be Anands last tournament before he retires to prepare for the Championship match in November,and hence represent the last time that the pair will face off before the title bout. After Carlsen emerged as the contender,the pair played each other in the Norway Chess 2013 tournament,where Anand held the Norwegian to a fighting draw.
World No. 1 Carlsen leads the strong field,which includes four of the top five players and nine of the top 14. The average rating of the participants is 2777,making it a category 22 event. The draw for the ten-player round robin tournament will be determined by a Blitz tournament to be played late on Wednesday. Nine rounds will be played between June 13 and 24,with the 19th being a rest day.
The strength of the field also means that both Anand and Carlsen will know there will be no respite even when they arent facing each other. The field includes the likes of young talents like Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura,both of whom have beaten Anand this year. Sergey Karjakin,who missed out on the Candidates tournament earlier in 2013,would also be a strong title contender,having condemned Carlsen to a rare tournament defeat at Norway Chess last month. World Rapid Champion Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and finalist at last years WC match Boris Gelfand will also be participating.
Having played more games this year than in the recent past,Anand has worked himself back into a fair bit of form his defeat of Veselin Topalov at Norway Chess was a standout. But worryingly,he has also had moments of poor concentration,his twin defeats to the relatively unheralded Wang Hao,both of which came in the last rounds of tournaments being cases in point. Whether they were the product of tiredness or just bad days in the office remains to be seen.
Carlsen,on the other hand,has managed to maintain his stratospheric rating this year. He won at Tata Steel and the Candidates tournament and finished second at Norway,in the three events he has played so far in 2013.
