Anish Giri

Dutch GM

“Since I’m a participant, I may be a little bias but still.

It’s very sensible to place Hikaru and Fabi in the Top two. Simply because 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. Hikaru was actually fighting for the Championship Match twice with only one round to go which is a tremendous achievement. Just looking at these facts you have to place him high in the list alongside Fabi because he has been such a stable player for so many years.

And then a bunch of others, Wei Yi never played the Candidates. Pragg played, but he didn’t come as close as others. Esipenko and 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 a few, Esipenko beat Carlsen in Wijk aan Zee many years ago but he didn’t play regularly. Sindarov is a rising comet, but he hasn’t yet had the time to win a lot of tournaments. Also, we have Blubaum, he was playing very tight in the Grand Swiss.

Everybody has motivation, despite the low chances of success. That’s why this event is so widely followed and anticipated because people feel that all these players care.”