Corus preview: Grandmastergroup C

In about two and a half days, the world's best players will have gathered again at the windy coastal town of Wijk aan Zee, to show their very best at the Corus Chess Tournament. ChessVibes is present of course, during the whole tournament, to provide as much (video) coverage as possible.Yes, that includes the full press conferences, so you might start getting your best chair, some drinks and snacks in front of your computer to enjoy it all. We will do some previews and today we take Grandmastergroup C, where top seed Moiroshnichenko had to withdraw, due to visa problems.

An unfortunate Evgeny Miroshnichenko from Ukraine loses all Corus dreams he had, due to silly visa problems. Perhaps he'll get a chance next year, but for 2008 the organizers have replaced him with Grandmaster Shilong Li from China. Li, the current number 17 of China with a rating of 2502, also played in Corus C last year. He's an attractive player: in 2006 he finished on 5th place, with the remarkable score of seven wins, five losses and one draw.

The participants:

[TABLE=51]

Now the big talent from Italy (and fresh Italian Champ) Fabiano Caruana is top seed. Young players usually fluctuate in their results, so it's quite unsure if he will win this group, but he certainly has a big chance. Nijboer, who after flirting with a mature 2600 rating dropped points again, will definitely play for the tournament victory again, to qualify for group B, where he belonged for so long. A remarkable name is Arik Braun, only an IM but still third seed. We don't know much about him yet, but we're surely going to find out more in the coming weeks.

Reinderman qualified at the Cultural Village Tournament in November and then tried to get into even better shape in Groningen, but he needs to do better than there. Negi lost his status as the world's youngest GM and now he can show that he hasn't lost his talent yet. Grivas is from a completely different generation and has written quite a few books in recent years. We already spoke about Li so let's move one to Carlsson: that's my pick as a dangerous outsider. I met this player from Sweden (for once in a while not blond, on the contrary) in the summer of 2004 in Badalona (Spain) and there already he was very serious.

Van der Wiel didn't show much ambition last year and at this year's Dutch Championship he drew all his games, so the question is: how long will his reputation, that goes back to the nineteen eighties, last? Then the ladies: Ushenina is a young talent from the Ukraine and just by appearance might score a few points against the young lads ;-), Krush will also finish higher than her place on the list and Peng, well, she's just very strong and always very stable. Mark van der Werf is the current general manager of the Royal Dutch Chess Federation's Office and not very active as a chess player, so a question mark here. Dennis Ruijgrok can't go wrong, and hopefully he'll score at least some victories.

So what do you think...

[Poll=19]