Magnus vs. History: Sinquefield Cup

World Champion Magnus Carlsen will be dreaming of setting new chess records when he starts the 11-round Sinquefield Cup against Anish Giri on Saturday. He goes into the event, featuring all of the world’s top 9 players, on a rating of 2882, matching the peak he set back in 2014. Can he improve on that, can he cross 2900, or can he “at least” beat his peak live rating of 2889.2? We’ll soon find out, though to beat any of those records he’s going to need to stop playing like his “evil twin brother” as he did in the St. Louis Rapid and Blitz!

The pairings for the 2019 Sinquefield Cup have long been known, since they’re exactly the same as the Croatia Grand Chess Tour pairings, only with colours reversed. Once again it’s the full cast of Grand Chess Tour regulars with no wild cards, making it one of the strongest events ever held.

It comes in the immediate aftermath of the St. Louis Rapid & Blitz, so it was decided to combine the closing ceremony for that tournament with the opening ceremony of the Sinquefield Cup. That event took place on Thursday evening in the St. Louis World Chess Hall of Fame, and you can watch it below:

There are also matches for three more US stars:

• Fabiano Caruana vs. Garry Kasparov
• Wesley So vs. Veselin Topalov
• Leinier Dominguez vs. Peter Svidler
• Hikaru Nakamura vs. Levon Aronian

Each match has the same format of six rapid games with 30 minutes for all moves and a 10-second delay, followed by fourteen 5+5 blitz games. The rapid games are worth double.

That’s a 4-day event from 2-5 September, but first up is the Sinquefield Cup that will be live here on chess24 at the usual time of 13:00 in St. Louis or 20:00 CEST on Saturday 17 August, with the same commentary teams that brought you the Rapid & Blitz. Don’t miss it!

See also:

• Grand Chess Tour
• All the Sinquefield Cup games with computer analysis
• St. Louis Rapid & Blitz Winners & Losers