World No. 2 Viswanathan Anand will play with black pieces against USA’s No. 1 Hikaru Nakamura in his campaign-opener of the elite Sinquefield Cup chess tournament in St. Louis (Missouri, USA).
The elite of world chess will be seen in action over nine rounds, spread over the next 10 days, at the Cless Club and Scholastic Centre. With the World’s top seven ranked players forming part of the 10-player field, this could well be the strongest event of the year.
First-round pairings (Prefix denotes World ranking): 4-Hikaru Nakamura (USA, 2814) v 2-Viswanathan Anand (2816); 1-Magnus Carlsen (Nor, 2853) v 3-Veselin Topalov (Bul, 2816); 11-Levon Aronian (Arm, 2765) v 5-Fabiano Caruana (USA, 2808); 6-Anish Giri (Ned, 2793) v 9-Alexander Grischuk (Rus, 2771); 7-Welsey So (USA, 2779) v 24-Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Fra, 2731).
