nice but who edited the pictures ??? way too much colorization

So there you are. Sitting next to Daniel King at this glamorous occassion.What do you do?
You whip out your "smart-phone" and start staring at its screen.
What a douche.

Not exactly matching the price money, that trophy :)

Not exactly matching the price money, that trophy :)

So this is how my donation was spent! Hope the wine tasted good.

really amazing: a fantastic event just finished, everyone (ok, almost) is celebrating and having a good time ... and now look at the comments above: 5 out of 6 have to criticize something, be it the colours of the - in my opinion very nice - photos or something else. Well, for my part, I'm very glad I could witness this historical chess tournament and looking forward to Wijk and the Candidates 2013!

Hats off to Peter for his extraordinary coverage of a fantastic tournament!

HIP HIP HOORAH!!!

Carlsens opening seems a little suspect ;)

Either all the lady boys got a fair well kiss from Judit or Karl Lagerfeld, on the sly, handed out some lipstick samples.

Not such a great event when compared to what comes out of Russia these days.
Next year I hope we'll see more top players, so there is less of a cap in strength between top and bottom.
Stronger commentators would be great, though we all like Daniel King, of course.

Production is way behind and has a destinct amateur feel to it.
Video quality is simply too bad and not set up properly, so let's have some HD and a producer that knows what he is doing next year, please.
If you really have to have those silly breaks in the transmission, then at least show the boards while you have them.

So, enough work to do in preparation for next years event for Mr. IgotGoogleAnalyticsExecutiveChairmanbutcannotgetarealSponsor Pein

All the pics were great!! best facial expression...Naka

Way too many dudes, need some babes in the pics. Camera-man needs to be fired a.s.a.p !

I just realized something,... what a Class act Anand is for not demanding more attention as the world champion! Granted Carlsen is exciting for other reasons,..that said shouldnt interviewers also talk Anand too at least out of respect?

The most impressive thing with Carlsen is his consistency. He has won 9 of his last 13 tournaments, and in his ten latest starts the only tournaments he didn't win were:

London 2011, +3 with 2875 performance
Wijk 2012, +3 with 2830 performance
Biel 2012, +4 with 2878 performance

So even when he has "bad" tournaments they are on the level that would make any other player consider them a big success.

Yes, the difference between nr.1 and nr. last was considerable. Next year plse Ivantschuk, Morozevich and one Nigel Short (!).

"Stronger commentators"?? Daniel King and Nigel Short are pretty strong!

"Stronger commentators"?? Daniel King and Nigel Short are pretty strong!

Fantastic coverage, historical tournament, thanks !

Eiae talks total rubbish. The London Chess Classic is a great tournament and far better than any Russian tournament I've seen on the internet. The commentary was great from start to finish by all. Apart from a few technical problems via the live video, Mac (the Producer) did a great job once again (although a second camera unit would be a very good idea next year) The chess was exciting and a pleasure to watch. Malcolm Pein and his team behind the scenes continues to run a fine world class tournament. Malcolm is a credit to British chess and to the game in general. He will be remembered long after he is gone as a great man for the game of chess. Of course improvements can always be made in any tournament structure (I'd like to see Maurice Ashley invited as a commentator to the London Chess Classic because his style of commentating is great to listen to but that's down to Malcolm to invite Maurice well in advance) but in general I think all those who organised this great tournament did a great job! I hope more great tournaments like the London Chess Classic can be organised in the UK. Maybe Nigel Short could create a similar one in the North of England. He certainly has the ability and the pulling power in terms of his chess fame to do that, whether he wants to is down to him, but I think he'd do a great job. Does Richard Branson like chess? I know Sting does. And Lennox Lewis. Perhaps they'd be interested in creating a world class chess tournament in the North of England to complement the one down South. It only takes a few phone calls to some very wealthy famous people to get the ball rolling and before you know it, good things start to happen. Give it a go Nigel, you have nothing to lose. Congrats once again to Malcolm Pein and all concerned, I think you're all a credit to the game. The London Chess Classic was great! Very well done one and all.

Happy birthday to Vishy Anand! He turns 43 today.

I agree with all those who feel this was the best tournament of the year for a multitude of reasons. Great atmosphere, geat commentary and great fighting chess so what else matters. I don't mind the back markers and McShane certainly added to this event by providing complex and exciting games.

This is now my favorite chess event to look forward too hope we can have something like it in the USA. I would love to see FIDE and USCF get on the same page and use the same system which is where it appears to be going on some levels with more FIDE rated events in the US. If that happened and FIDE could do a much better selection process for the WC match I think chess will grow by leaps and bounds.

i like mcshane and in the past he has shown his greatness but i gotta say i don't really think his games in this event were exciting, basically he was just getting mauled. against kramnik and aronian for example the commentators raved about his resistance but i didnt see it that way. most super gms wouldve resigned, and rightfully so, long before luke finally did (basically waiting for mate on the board).

One of the best tournaments i ever watched, the games were hard fought and many complex endgames arose, more than half of the games were decided (!), 19 out of 36 , i mean, were you will find such an unusual feature in today top tournaments ?

Diaz, I need my dose! Where are you?

As a German, I remember great Dortmund events, but I doubt Dortmund 2012 was one of the very best. And I don't think (apart from Kramnik in both events), that Karjakin, Caruana, Ponomariov and Leko, despite their undisputable strength, are really about an equal match to a field with Carlsen, Aronian, Anand and Nakamura.

I enjoyed LCC 2012 a lot, and don't see any reason for the small minded nitpicking about photo quality, commentators (only Chris Ward was a pain to watch) or so called better quality of Russian events (I like those as well, but fail to see what's so much better about them, while they often don't even offer English comments all along).

Magnus Carlsen did not only show incredible constant playing strength and fighting spirit, but also a very mature and relaxed personality. He has a dry sense of humor, a realistic perception of the other top players (playing on his level, just not as constant as him - which clearly is a big additional strength), great skill and memory concerning chess history, and a very sympathetic will to go his own way (pragmatic human struggle of ideas over the board, instead of high claims of chess revolutions, which are just unrealistic dreams of commentators from outside, misjudging where chess is today, in the engine age).

He named the strong and weaker points of his own play just as unbiased as the best commentators could. This guy is a great represantative of modern chess from my view, just as Kramnik, Aronian, Anand and the others are in their own way. Al in all: much to enjoy with this kind of chess events these days. Big thanks to organisators and players!