Aronian, Carlsen, Kramnik in Amber 2010, Anand and Topalov not

Hot from the press: the organizers of the 2010 Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament today announced the list of participants - Carlsen, Kramnik, Aronian, Gelfand, Gashimov, Ivanchuk, Svidler, Ponomariov, Morozevich, Karjakin, Dominguez and Smeets.

PRESS RELEASE

The 19th Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament takes place at the Palais de la Mediterranée, a legendary hotel on the world-famous Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, from March 12 to 25, 2010. The event is organized by the Association Max Euwe of chess maecenas Joop van Oosterom, which is based in Monaco.

The new number one in the world rankings, Magnus Carlsen, is the top-seed in Nice. Also present are Levon Aronian, the winner of the past two Amber tournaments, and Vladimir Kramnik, who won the Amber tournament a record six times.

The following twelve grandmasters will take part (between brackets their country and their rating in the January 1, 2010 world rankings): Magnus Carlsen (Norway, 2810), Vladimir Kramnik (Russia, 2788), Levon Aronian (Armenia, 2781), Boris Gelfand (Israel, 2761), Vugar Gashimov (Azerbaijan, 2759), Vasily Ivanchuk (Ukraine, 2749), Peter Svidler (Russia, 2744), Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine, 2737), Alexander Morozevich (Russia, 2732), Sergey Karjakin (Russia, 2720), Leinier Dominguez (Cuba, 2712) and Jan Smeets (The Netherlands, 2657).

Viswanathan Anand and Veselin Topalov were invited, but apparently they decided to skip this year's event because just a few weeks later their World Championship match is scheduled. In fact half of the field of last year is different: Leko, Radjabov, Kamsky and Wang Yue also don't play next time; new compared to last year are Gelfand, Gashimov, Svidler, Ponomariov, Dominguez and Smeets.

For the 2010 edition we should consider Aronian, Carlsen and Kramnik as the big favourites. But what about the rest of the field?