Sinquefield Cup 2013 was Magnus Carlsen-ed

Hailed as one of the strongest chess tournament ever held in the US soil, Sinquefield Cup was consisted of Magnus Carlsen, Levon Aronian, Hikaru Nakamura and Gata Kamsky on the playing field. Only parallel by Kasparov-Anand and Kasparov - Deep Blue of the '90s, was how strong the tournament was, said GM Maurice Ashley. The four of them made up a staggering of 2797 average rating. The Sinquefield Cup is held from September 9th to September 15th at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis. Where Saint Louis is fast emerging as US most advance chess area.

Magnus Carlsen, Levon Aronian, Hikaru Nakamura and Gata Kamsky in a great photography shoot out by the organizer - this edited wallpaper is in 1280 x 800 resolution, click to download

In the week of Sinquefield Cup, my attention was divided between the games and the 'master class' held by GM Yasser Seirawan. That's it, the event boosted a lot just because Yaz was doing live commentaries together with lovely Jennifer Shahade. With only two games in play, Yasser got enough time to done very detail live analysis with his creative variation lines. If that's not enough with Yaz and Jen, there was also GM Maurice Ashley, who playing the character of "I'm from Brooklyn" chess patzer. I strongly hope and insist the live commentary to be uploaded to Youtube for future viewing please. I also informed by Chessbase reports that there were also two more teams doing commentaries, GM Ben Finegold + GM Ronen Har-Zvi and GM Varuzhan Akobian + GM Ian Rogers on others room! Wow, this place need to do more chess tournaments!

Replay Sinquefield Cup 2013 Commentary on this Youtube channel.

On the games itself, initially I hope Gata Kamsky can be dark horse. But then he rather play  a relax tournament with sharp choice of strategy and openings (Dutch defence vs Aronian) and finished last without a win. Magnus Carlsen snapped the trophy in quite intense way, where the final round saw Hikaru Nakamura keep pushing himself to catch Magnus with only a half point different. Magnus Carlsen dismissed Aronian's draw offer and won the last round, where Hikaru only draw to Kamsky.

Sinquefield Cup 2013 Final standing:

	Player	FIDE rating	01	02	03	04	01	02	03	04	Points
1	Magnus Carlsen (Norway)	2862	X	½	½	1	X	½	1	1	4.5
2	Hikaru Nakamura (United States)	2772	½	X	1	1	½	X	0	½	3.5
3	Levon Aronian (Armenia)	2813	½	0	X	½	0	1	X	½	2.5
4	Gata Kamsky (United States)	2741	0	0	½	X	0	½	½	X	1.5

Magnus Carlsen vs Levon Aronian, Sinquefield Cup 2013, Round 6:

Master Strategy Class by Yaz Seirawan and Jen Shahade

with GM Maurice Ashley of Brooklyn

GM Varuzhan Akobian and GM Ian Roger

and GM Ben Finegold + Ronen Har-Zvi in the chess headquarter, St Louis Chess Club

and Ray-Ban .... played at higher level of chess