The Line Up of the 2024 XTX Markets London Chess Classic
This year’s main event featured four top English players alongside four of the world’s elite including world # 18, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Women’s World Champion Ju Wenjun, both players making their debut at the London Chess Classic.
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov
Rating: 2733 (Highest Rating:: 2820)
World Ranking: 18 (Highest Ranking: 2)
One of only 16 players ever to have crossed the magic 2800 rating barrier, iconic Azerbaijani Grandmaster Shakhriyar Mamedyarov is a fan favourite known for his tactical sharpness and creativity. The Classic will be his second appearance of the year in London, having taken part in the star-studded show which was the Global Chess League on Euston Road back in early October. There Mamedyarov won six games and only lost two for runners-up PGB Alaskan Knights, while largely staying true to his trademark brand of dynamic and fearless chess.
Mamedyarov first burst on to the chess scene as a teenager, winning the World Junior Championship in 2003 and 2005, the first player to win this prestigious title twice. By 2007 he had already established himself in the world’s elite and had soon won several major tournaments, including the Tal Memorial and the 2013 World Rapid Championship. At his best ‘Shakh’ is a match for anyone, as he demonstrated in the top section of the famous Biel Chess Festival in the summer of 2018, where he defeated Magnus Carlsen while finishing not just undefeated in first place, but a whole point and a half ahead of the world champion.
As well as his aggressive and inventive style, a Mamedyarov trademark is his opening preparation. He frequently wheels out original ideas and even plays some quite unexpected openings, often leading to sharp, uncompromising battles. Known too for his willingness to push the limits of the position, Shakh will be making a popular debut at the Classic, where he is sure to shake things up. Ideally we’ll get to see his tactical flair and fearless approach in action, as he bids to add another major tournament to his trophy cabinet.
Vidit Gujrathi
Rating: 2726 (Highest Rating: 2747)
World Ranking: 22 (Highest Ranking: 14)
One of the so-called ‘Generation Inspired by Anand’, 30-year-old Vidit can also be seen as one of the elder statesmen in the new generation of Indian Grandmasters that has been taking the chess world by storm over the past few years. A member of the gold medal-winning Olympiad team in 2024, there Vidit lined up alongside Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa and Erigaisi, contributing a number of important wins while scoring an unbeaten 7.5/10 on board 4.
Born in Nashik in the western state of Maharashtra, Vidit made an early name for himself by winning the Under-14 World Youth Championship and was awarded the Grandmaster title in 2013. Since then, he has won many tournaments around the world, including the Gashimov Memorial and especially the FIDE Grand Swiss, which took place in Douglas, the capital of the Isle of Man, last October. There Vidit played the ultimate Swiss Gambit, losing in the first round before forcing his way through the field to finish first with 8.5/11, half a point ahead of Hikaru Nakamura.
That qualified him for the Candidates Tournament in Toronto, Canada, which was, of course, won by Dommaraju Gukesh and where Vidit scored 6/14, including two stylish wins over Nakamura. Indeed, it’s been a busy 2024 for Vidit, as, like Mamedyarov, he competed in October in the Tech Mahindra Global Chess League before staying on in London for the WR Masters, where he was eliminated by compatriot Arjun Erigaisi.
Equally capable of grinding away in his beloved Catalan as White or fighting hard for the initiative in a Sicilian Najdorf as Black, Vidit has a typical modern style. Will we see him grinding away and also whipping up mating attacks as he bids for the top spot on his Classic debut?
Nikita Vitiugov
Rating: 2667 (Highest Rating: 2751)
World Ranking: 60 (Highest Ranking: 19)
Horrified at his mother country’s invasion of Ukraine, Nikita Vitiugov first moved from Russia to Spain with his wife and young child, and has now settled in north London. Indeed, last autumn Vitiugov made his debut for England in the European Team Championship, scoring an unbeaten ‘+2’ on top board.
Born in St. Petersburg (still called Leningrad back then in 1987), the 2021 Russian Champion twice won the World Team Championship with his native country. He’s also won many strong international tournaments, including the Gibraltar Masters in 2013, which back then could claim to be the world’s strongest Open. Nikita is renowned for his universal style, as well as excellent preparation, and is equally happy to open with 1 d4 or 1 e4 as White. Little wonder then that he has seconded Peter Svidler in two Candidates tournaments, as well as his good friend Ian Nepomniachtchi in the last two World Championship matches.
This will be Vitiugovs’s third appearance at the Classic, having helped the Rest of the World to victory over England in 2021 before returning to play in central London last December, but this will be his first time at a real Classic, i.e. a full chess festival. UK fans will surely welcome the chance to see their new leading player in action and based on his performance at ChessFest in Trafalgar Square back in July, Nikita may well gain plenty more fans.
Nikita has recently started working with one of England’s great talents, Shreyas Royal, who he will actually have to face over the board at the Emirates. Chess may largely be his life, but away from the board, Nikita is an avid football fan, as well as someone who likes long walks, classical music and the BBC series Cormoran Strike.
Michael Adams
Rating: 2662 (Highest Rating: 2761)
World Ranking: 63 (Highest Ranking: 4)
The current World Senior Champion is a fixture at the London Chess Classic, having played in every event since the inaugural tournament at Olympia in 2009. And who could forget Adams’s superb performance at last year’s Classic, where he might have let Gukesh no less off with a draw, but still claimed an unbeaten first place with 6/9. That sufficed for a 2770 performance and reminded the world that Adams can still compete with the world’s best.
Talented from a young age, Michael Adams won his first British Championship at the age of 17, since when he has won the tournament on a further seven occasions. By the early 1990s, the man known as Mickey was establishing himself as one of the world’s leading players. Indeed, he would spend many years in the world’s top-five, usually finding only a certain Garry Kasparov too good, while coming agonisingly close to winning the FIDE World Championship in 2004, losing a rapid play-off in the final.
Mickey helped England to the bronze medals at the 1990 Olympiad then to Gold at the 1997 European Team Championship. For more than two decades he anchored the team on top board, including as England finished second to Russia at the 2019 World Team Championship. Nowadays he remains a regular in the England team, as well as board one in the over-50 team, the current European Senior Team Champions.
Renowned for his positional prowess, Adams is sometimes known as ‘the Spider’ on account of his ability to run opponents out of active possibilities. Away from chess, he enjoys running and watching both Somerset and England play cricket. Mickey is also a Tottenham Hotspur fan, so how will he handle playing at the home of their hated rivals?
Gawain Jones
Rating: 2639 (Highest Rating: 2709)
World Ranking: 97 (Highest Ranking: 32)
British Champion Gawain Jones has long been one of England’s leading grandmasters. Talented from a very young age, when just nine years old he became the youngest player ever at the time to defeat an International Master in an official tournament game. That rapidplay win against our very own tournament supremo, Chess in Schools and Communities Chief Executive, and Daily Telegraph chess columnist, Malcolm Pein, even propelled Gawain on to the front page of The Guardian.
As his family moved from Yorkshire to Italy to Ireland, Jones continued to play plenty of chess, and improve rapidly. He became an IM in 2004 at the age of 17 and a grandmaster just three years later, before breaking the 2600 barrier in 2011 en route to winning the Commonwealth Championship, then the first of his three British Championship titles in 2012.
Long a contented globetrotter, Jones has lived in Australia and New Zealand, with his late wife Sue Maroroa, as well as west London and nowadays Sheffield, where he resides with his two young children.
Not only has Jones won such events as the Dubai Open, even claiming back-to-back titles there in 2016 and 2017, and often competed at the Classic, winning the British Knockout Championship at it in 2018, but he has long been a regular in the England team, for whom he won both team silver and individual silver medals at the 2019 World Team Championships in Astana.
A noted blitz expert, Jones has a natural attacking flair, and a fine feeling for dynamics. No wonder then that one of his favourite openings is the King’s Indian Defence, on which he wrote and presented a best-selling course for Chessable, which was subsequently published in two volumes by Quality Chess.
Andrew Hong
Rating: 2572 (Highest Rating: 2572)
World Ranking: 256 (U-20 Ranking: 23)
Andrew Hong turns 20 the week before the Classic and has emerged as one of the top young talents in the US. Currently ranked no.2 among American players aged under-21, Hong has accumulated an impressive list of tournament achievements. He tied for first at the 2021 Philadelphia International and in 2023 finished second equal in the US Junior Championship. He currently enjoys his highest-ever FIDE rating and is quickly making a name for himself.
Hong’s chess journey began at the age of seven, when he was taught to play by his brother. Within just a few years, he was competing in national and international tournaments, and in 2016 he took silver in the World Under-12 Championship in Greece. The next year he became an FM, then an IM in 2019 and when still only 16 he achieved grandmaster status.
A former student of the Kasparov Chess Federation Young Stars Program, Andrew enjoys such critical lines as the Open Sicilian as White and counter-attacking with the Najdorf as Black. Of late he has broadened his repertoire, taking up 1 d4 and even the Jobava London, with which he has twice defeated Magnus Carlsen no less in Titled Tuesday.
His interests extend far beyond the chessboard. A well-rounded student at Ivy League-affiliated Brown University on Rhode Island, Hong enjoys basketball, football, art and playing the guitar. His commitment, versatility and competitive spirit have unsurprisingly won him plenty of fans in the States, while he was a hit with the crowd when helping out at the Global Chess League in London, also acting as a reserve at that super-strong event. Might his debut in a different premier tournament on the world stage now herald his best result to date?
Ju Wenjun
Rating: 2563 (Highest Rating: 2604)
World Ranking: 286 (Highest Ranking: 2 for women)
Women’s World Chess Champion, Ju Wenjun, became just the fifth female player ever to be rated over 2600 in 2017. The following year she became world champion, defeating compatriot Tan Zhongyi 5.5-4.5 in a match in Shanghai and Chongqing. Ju has defended her title on three occasions, the first time having to win a 64-player knockout no less in late 2018 in Khanty-Mansiysk, where she defeated the big Russian home hopes Alexandra Kosteniuk and Kateryna Lagno in her final two mini-matches.
In 2020, Ju faced another Russian Aleksandra Goryachkina, winning a tie-break to their match, which took place in Shanghai and Vladivostok, before in 2023 overcoming Chinese GM Lei Tingjie in a match, which was again staged in Shanghai and Chongqing. And next summer those two massive cities will play host once again as Ju takes on Tan in a repeat of their 2018 match.
A popular figure in her native country, Ju has worked with many of the leading Chinese players, as well as the Indian Olympiad team gold medallist Pentala Harikrishna. She herself led the Chinese team to the gold medals at the 2018 Women’s Chess Olympiad and, yes, of course, she has defeated countless male grandmasters over the years.
January saw Ju make her debut in the A Group at Wijk aan Zee, where she defeated world no.6 Alireza Firouzja and finished on a highly creditable 4.5/13. She then defeated Ukraine’s Anton Korobov and Germany’s big hope, Vincent Keymer, while scoring 50% at the TePe Sigeman & Co Tournament in Malmo. The question now is which scalps will Ju claim as she makes her Classic debut, where she’s likely to rely on her classy positional style, although opponents will underestimate her keen tactical eye at their peril.
Shreyas Royal
Rating: 2519 (Highest Rating: 2519)
World Ranking: 507 (Highest Ranking: 507)
Shreyas Royal made history this summer by becoming England’s youngest-ever grandmaster, securing his final norm at the British Championship in Hull, where his highly practical piece sacrifice belied his young age as he defeated top seed David Howell no less. Royal also drew with England regulars Luke McShane and Gawain Jones, as well as Michael Adams, against whom he staged an impressive rearguard action to save the day in the final round.
Back in October Shreyas also found himself in serious trouble with the black pieces and against the 15th world chess champion, Vishy Anand. Did he panic in the opening round of the WR Masters in central London? Naturally he didn’t and instead made fine use of a stalemate resource to drive Anand away from the winning path and so secure a landmark draw, even if the Indian legend did gain his revenge in the return game.
Born in India in 2009, Shreyas moved to London as a young child when his father accepted a senior position in IT. In 2018, he made headlines when then Home Secretary Sajid Javid intervened to grant his father a work visa, recognising that Shreyas’s precocious talent in chess was too great for the UK to lose.
Since then Royal has gone from strength to strength, rising to most challenges. Many considered him to have been thrown in at the deep end when making his Classic debut last year, but Shreyas didn’t let the organisers down, only losing twice in a world-class line-up to finish on a most impressive 4/9 and so secure a GM norm. A new crop of English talent is currently emerging, headed up by Shreyas. Will he exploit his calm style and strategic insight to take another step towards 2600 at the Emirates?
Regulations
The regulations for this tournament can be found here.
