London Classic 1 - Twittersphere 0 !

The opening ceremony of the 2012 London Chess Classic took place today, and is available for replay here.

Following the conference, the players took on the Twittersphere and scored an easy victory in 22 moves!

The tournament organiser Malcolm Pein has set very high standards for media coverage of chess, at that looks set to continue this year at the excellent official website.

The opening round starts tomorrow at 14:00 local time (09:00 EST), with Luke McShane v Magnus Carlsen, Lev Aronian v Hikaru Nakamura, Vladimir Kramnik v Judit Polgar, and Gawain Jones v Mickey Adams.

Vishy Anand has a bye for the first round, and will be helping out in the commentary room.

The live move replay will be available here, and video coverage and commentary here.

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Magnus Carlsen

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Judit Polgar

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Lev Aronian

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Vishy Anand

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Vladimir Kramnik

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Luke McShane

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Hikaru Nakamura

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Mickey Adams

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Gawain Jones

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Photos by Ray Morris-Hill from the opening ceremony.