Bilbao Line-Up Nearly Complete

The line-up for the Bilbao Final Masters 2011 is nearly complete, with five of the six places now filled.

The format is a double round-robin and this year's event will be split into two halves: the first from 25 Sept - 1 Oct in São Paulo, Brazil and the second in Bilbao, Spain from 5 - 11 October.

The confirmed players are:

Magnus Carlsen (winner in Nanjing) - world rank #1
Vishy Anand (world champion) - world rank #2
Lev Aronian - (pictured) - world rank #3
Sergey Karjakin (runner-up in Bazna) - world rank #4
Hikaru Nakamura (winner in Wijk) - world rank #6*

The last player should be announced soon by the organisers, but one strong possibility is last year's winner Vladimir Kramnik, ranked #5 in the world.

That would mean that the top 6 ranked players in the world would be playing in the same tournament! Or at least it would, if the USCF had sent Nakamura's games in his match victory against Ponomariov in May to FIDE on time to be included in the July rating list. Which they didn't, despite having more than a month to do it. Understandably, Nakamura is a bit upset about that.

Despite that hiccup, which may deny the organisers an additional selling point for the event (who knows what the September list will look like?), it will definitely be a tournament not to be missed!

*Nakamura is only #9 on the official July FIDE ranking list.