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FILE PHOTO: Dutch GM Anish Giri in action. (PBG Alaskan Knights)
At the upcoming Candidates tournament in March-April, the two Americans in action, Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana, will be favourites, according to Anish Giri, who will also be competing in the Candidates.
In an interview with Greg Mustreader for the Chess with Mustreader podcast, when Giri was asked who he would put as the favorites, the Dutch grandmaster replied: “I can’t quite do that, I guess, as I’m a participant (at the Candidates). It’s very sensible to place Hikaru (Nakamura) and Fabi (Caruana) in the top two.”
Talking about Nakamura’s credentials, Giri said: “Hikaru is the highest rated and, somewhat surprisingly to me, he has the best score against the field. Largely because he’s doing well against Fabiano recently and he’s been doing fine against me. I didn’t really pay attention much to our score because we haven’t played classical for like an insane amount of years. But at some point, he’s achieved a fine score against me too. Whenever you include rapid and blitz, his score will always be good too, right? Because he’s better at rapid and blitz than classical usually. Even better. So his score only gets more amplified if you include rapid and blitz too.
“He has this very high rating, right? So it’s tempting to just put him there. And he even finished not so badly in the previous Candidates. Last time he was fighting for the first, and actually the one before that, the time he fought for the second—in hindsight, it would have given him a match if he had won. So he was actually fighting for the championship match twice with one round to go, which is a tremendous achievement. It’s a tremendous achievement. So just looking at these facts, you have to place him high in the list,” Giri explained.
WATCH: Anish Giri breaks down Candidates’ credentials
Then, he explained why Caruana was high on his list.
“Fabi, of course, obviously such a stable player. I mean, for so many years he’s been winning so many events. And he got to the match with Magnus and he almost, he took him all the way down to the wire and almost won that match as well. I wouldn’t say almost won, but okay—almost not lost them, whatever that means. So it’s very normal to take these two players.”
Giri then spoke about the rest of the players, including India’s R Praggnanandhaa.
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“There are a bunch of others they have barely played in the Candidates. I think Wei Yi never played the Candidates. Pragg played, but he didn’t come as close as others. In his outing last time, he gave a good show. Probably that’s why (Carlsen) mentioned Pragg (as third favourite to win the Candidates),” said Giri.
“(Andrey) Esipenko and (Javokhir) Sindarov—they’re very young, they haven’t yet participated so you can’t tell much. They also haven’t even played that many top tournaments. They’ve played of course a few. Esipenko beat Carlsen in Wijk aan Zee many years ago, but he didn’t play regularly so he can’t also say he didn’t win many top tournaments—but he played in like three or two top tournaments in his life, I don’t know how many. Sindarov as well, he’s just like rising like a comet recently and he hasn’t yet had the time and the chance to win a lot.”
English (US) ·