The 2018 Candidates tournament is about to start in Berlin (1am Canberra time). The field of 8 players will play each other twice to determine who will challenge Magnus Carlsen for the World Championship. While there are a couple of notable names missing from the field (Nakamura and Anand spring to mind), the fact that only 46 rating points separate the top seed (Mamedyarov) and the bottom seed (Karjakin) means that the tournament will either be incredibly competitive, or super cautious. I'm certainly hoping for the former, but I wouldn't be surprised if Round 12 (out of 14) is reached with 1 point separating the entire field!
As for who is going to win, I honestly don't know. I'm going to discount Ding Liren and Grischuk's chances, and I can't see Kramnik taking first place either (despite his 2800 rating). That leaves 5 players (Aronian, Caruana, So, Mamedyarov and Karjakin) that I think could all take first place. If I had to pick one of form, I'd take Mamedyarov, while one sentiment, I'd like to see Aronian across the board from Carlsen later in the year.
The official tournament website is here, while chess24 is also covering the game at this link.
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