Corus 2010 and other battlefields

As soon as the buzz of World Team Championship over the Corus 2010 is next on the queu. A very strong tournament with great tradition. Aronian is winner in 2008 and Karjakin in 2009 of Group A. This year with the rise of Carlsen, will the balance still maintained ? A lot of interesting questions will be answered in short.

Group A :
1. Who will ended Carlsen domination over the last two months ? New version of Carlsen debut in Nanjing yet to be stopped, even he was playing almost all the current strong players in Tal and London recently (excluded the Blitz of course).

2. How will Anand handle this tournament despite his duel with Topalov very soon. Is this tournament serve as his warming up with false message to his nemesis or will he full heart to win this?

3. Kramnik, also having good result recently, winning Tal and not dissapointing at London. He seem ready to challenge Carlsen despite losing one game to him.

4. And of course, Hikaru Nakamura. Another point of attraction. He got a Gold Medal in pocket but moment of truth is now.

5. The rest are like Ivanchuck, what version of him after his heartbreaking remark at World Cup? And who is be the "outsider" ?

Group B :
Of course most people will like to see how far Wesley So can go.
Group B is also looks like a "junior" championship with many notable "juniors" to be meet each other. Anish Giri, Howell, Negi, So and other.

Group C :
Li Chao (B) is top seed but we also like to see how is his smoking progress after the debut at World Cup. Ray Robson, Vocaturo, van Kempen, make this like a tournament to find out who is the hottest "youth" .

Pairings :
Corus A, round 1
S. Karjakin - V. Anand
L. Dominguez - V. Kramnik
P. Leko - A. Shirov
F. Caruana - V. Ivanchuk
S. Tiviakov - M. Carlsen
J. Smeets - H. Nakamura
L. van Wely - N. Short

Corus B, round 1
Ni - E. l'Ami
E. Sutovsky - D. Reinderman
T. Nyback - L. Nisipeanu
A. Giri - P. Harikrishna
D. Howell - P. Negi
A. Muzychuk - V. Akobian
A. Naiditsch - W. So

Corus C, round 1
R. Robson - S. Swaminathan
R. Swinkels - A. Gupta
M. Muzychuk - N. Grandelius
S. Kuipers - K. Lie
Z. Peng - R. van Kampen
B. Bok - L. Chao
D. Vocaturo - S. Plukkel

official website and live game are provided at chessdom.com.

And that's our main menu, the side menu ? Still a lot of battlefields outside those elitee.

1st Balkan Open - Live here - GM Vuckovic Bojan is leading
Bellarus Championship - two Zhigalkos and Fedorov playing
Polish Championship - LIVE here - Wojtaszek, Radoslaw is leading
Ciudad de Sevilla - Hamdouchi almost win it.

and from Asia :

8th Parsvnath International India - Live here
massive number of GMs, Le Quang Liem is having bad start and now GM Ehsan Maghami plus 20+ players is leading with 3 points, after round 3. Chess result here.

and also Cuba Championship - Lazaro Bruzon on lead.

that's all to light up my weekend.