The Tal Memorial is once again getting under way. The Tal Memorial is a 10 player round robin held in Moscow named after the chess great Mikhail Tal. The following players will be participating in this years tournament.
Magnus Carlsen – 2826
Viswanathan Anand – 2811
Levon Aronian – 2802
Vladimir Kramnik – 2800
Vassily Ivanchuk – 2775
Sergey Karjakin – 2763
Hikaru Nakamura – 2758
Peter Svidler – 2755
Boris Gelfand – 2744
Ian Nepomniachtchi – 2730
Viswanathan Anand – 2811
Levon Aronian – 2802
Vladimir Kramnik – 2800
Vassily Ivanchuk – 2775
Sergey Karjakin – 2763
Hikaru Nakamura – 2758
Peter Svidler – 2755
Boris Gelfand – 2744
Ian Nepomniachtchi – 2730
I am definitely looking forward to viewing the games and following the results of the tournament with such a strong field involved. The tournament has also motivated me to view some of the games Mikhail Tal played during his career. I found the following game quite interesting. Mikhail Tal plays white against Pal Benko in 1959. The opening is the Sicilian defense with the interesting hyper-accelerated variation, one that is not very familiar to me.