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White to play for the initiative (23rd move)

Ivanchuk-Kramnik 2009 ,Tal Memorial Round 9

The 2009 Tal memorial just finished, with Kramnik taking first place. Congratulations to Vlad for a victory in a super strong tournament ! His style was energetic throughout the whole tournament.

1-Kramnik 6/9
2&3 Ivanchuk,Carlsen 5.5/9
4&5 Anand,Aronian 5/9

Anand was in contention for first place but lost his last game to Aronian pretty badly.

It looks like Ivanchuk had a very strong attack against Kramnik in the 9th round, but he missed the critical continuation somewhere between move 21 and 25.
Concrete analysis and full game on the following 2 links:

http://www.thechessmind.net/storage/chess-posts/talmemorial2009_rd9.htm
http://www.chessbase.com/news/2009/talmem/games/round09.htm


Post tournament, there is a lot of chatter about Carlsen being unofficially the best rated player in the world ( less than a point ahead of Topalov!). This is following lots of hype about Kasparov training Carlsen to become the next world champ.


My simple and subjective view on the top chess players currently is as follows:

1.Anand and 2.Kramnik are the two strongest players as of November 2009. I believe that if they were to play another match, Kramnik would try to play more dynamically, which is he what he did in his next tournaments. I noticed that Anand had not won a tournament since he is world champ, but played well enough to finish 2nd ( or here 4th). These two players are stronger than the field at this juncture.

Next come 3.Topalov,4.Carlsen and 5.Aronian. These 3 are achieving impressive results with regularity at the very top, but wouldn't at this stage challenge succesfully Anand or Kramnik in a match.
What about the 2010 Topalov-Anand match ? I believe Anand would be clear favorite if the location would be in a neutral country. Having it in Sofia,Bulgaria is definitely increasing Topalov's chances, as Anand may feel psychologically presssured to play in Topalov's home country with obvious and numerous benefits.

After these 5 players, there is another layer of still super strong grandmasters. The main difference would be their consistency (or lackthereof) or experience at the very top.
This would include Ivanchuk,Morozevich,Gashimov,Vachier-Lagrave and Nakamura among many others. Ivanchuk for instance may very well win the Tal Memorial or Wijk aan Zee, as he is a truly brilliant player. He may just not sustain this level throughout the year.
These players are sometimes less well-known, which is why tournaments like London 2009 are exciting as new players are given a chance to compete against the best.
Nakamura will compete in London 2009, and Vachier-Lagrave won Biel 2009 ahead of Morozevich and others.