1. Vladimir Kramnik -Russia
Elo rating: 2799
World ranking: 1
Date of birth: June 25, 1975
Amber highlights: Overall winner in 1996, 1998 (shared with Shirov), 1999, 2001 (shared with Topalov), 2004 (shared with Morozevich) and 2007.

Although he has exactly the same rating as his rival Vishy Anand, last year’s Amber winner Vladimir Kramnik is the official number one in the January 1, 2008 world rankings. Following a prolonged period of physical complaints that unavoidably affected his results and rating, Kramnik started a convincing comeback at the 2006 Turin Olympiad. After a rest period of five months he achieved the highest performance rating (2847) playing first board for Russia. He continued his return to good form in Dortmund that year where he tied for first with Peter Svidler and took the title on tie-break. A few months later he travelled to Elista for the World Championship match against Veselin Topalov, the long-awaited reunification match that had to bring the chess world one generally recognized champion. In a tumultuous match riddled with incidents, Kramnik emerged as the winner, most probably helped by his bigger match experience. In the tie-break games he kept his cool and struck when the moment was there, as he had done in his tense match against Leko in Brissago in 2004 when in a must-win situation in the last round he ground down his opponent.
His best result in the early months of 2007 was his runaway victory in Monaco, two points clear of his nearest rival. In Dortmund he also claimed first prize, but in the World Championship Tournament in Mexico City Kramnik tied for second and lost the world title to Anand. This was obviously a disappointment but at the Tal Memorial in Moscow he once again showed great appetite and class. He demolished the opposition and earned enough rating points to move up to the peak of the Elo list.
The tall Russian has been among the world elite for some fifteen years now and won practically everything there is to be won. The tournament in Dortmund he claimed no less than eight(!) times. In 2000 he shared first place with Kasparov in Linares, a tie which turned out to be the prologue of his biggest success to date, his match victory over the same Kasparov later that year in London. In 2004 he won Linares again. That he knows how to play blindfold and rapid he has shown many times in the Amber tournament and his six overall wins bear further testimony to his exceptional talent.
Kramnik is known to be an extremely solid player. Some years ago he had a streak of 81 games that he went undefeated. Yet, that doesn’t mean that the Russian cannot sparkle, as anyone knows who witnessed his brilliant attack against Topalov in Amber 2003.

2. Viswanathan Anand - India
Elo rating: 2799
World ranking: 2
Date of birth: December 11, 1969
Amber highlights: Overall winner in 1994, 1997, 2003, 2005 and 2006 (shared with Morozevich)

World Champion Viswanathan Anand comes to Nice straight from his win in the Linares-Morelia elite tournament, the 25th jubilee edition of the Linares event. The Indian grandmaster took the lead in the Mexican part and coolly defended his position on Spanish soil. In fact, he exactly followed the same course as last year, when he also won, and even scored the same number of points. Apparently Anand feels at home in Mexico, as it was here, in the autumn of 2007 that he won the World Championship Tournament in great style, one point clear of his closest pursuers Gelfand and Kramnik and without losing a single game. With his recent win in Morelia-Linares, Anand will once again cross the 2800 barrier and reclaim the first place in the world rankings on the forthcoming April Elo list.
Anand is one of those rare superstars that seem to lose if they don’t win, as was the case in Wijk aan Zee last January, where for his fans his shared third place felt like a disappointment even if he finished only half a point behind the winners.
As always, the Indian phenomenon is one of the hot favourites in the Amber tournament. Last year he easily won the rapid, but had to settle for second place in the overall standings. In 2006 he also dominated the rapid and shared overall first with Morozevich. One year earlier he was even more awesome when he won both the rapid and the blindfold and finished 2,5 points (!) ahead of his closest rival.
Briefly recapping Anand’s splendid career is impossible but we might single out his winning the FIDE World Championship in 2000, his first win in Linares in 1998, his triumphs in the World Cup tournaments in Shenyang 2000 and Hyderabad 2002, his five wins in Wijk aan Zee (the first player in the rich history of this classic event to accomplish this feat) and his win in Dortmund in 2004. In rapid chess Anand is in a class of his own and listing his victories there would come close to giving an overview of the events held in the past years.
Hailing from Chennai, India, ‘Vishy’ Anand spends most of the time in Spain, where he lives close to Madrid. However, that has not stopped him from being a superstar in his own country where he was voted Indian sportsman of the year on various occasions.

3. Veselin Topalov - Bulgaria
Elo rating: 2780
World ranking: 3
Date of Birth: March 15, 1975
Rating January 1, 2008: 2780
Amber highlights: Overall winner (shared with Kramnik) in 2001.

Veselin Topalov is one of the most uncompromising grandmasters, if not the most uncompromising, of the world elite. The Bulgarian fights for victory in every game, no matter if he is white or black, accepting the fact that, as long as it leads to more wins, this attitude may also lead to more losses. However, in the recent tournaments in Wijk aan Zee and Morelia-Linares he wasn’t too happy about the number of games he lost and blamed it on a lack of sharpness. Topalov expressed the wish to work on this with the Amber tournament coming up and his ‘own’ tournament in Sofia. In the spring of last year he won the MTel Masters in the Bulgarian capital for the third time in a row and later he was also successful in Vitoria, the capital of the Spanish Basque country.
Topalov’s most successful year so far was 2005, when he shared first place in Linares, won Sofia for the first time and then wrote history in the World Championship Tournament in San Luis. With a dashing 6,5 out of 7 in the first half he tore the field apart and coasted home in the second half. Often World Champions find it hard to show their excellence when they first appear in their new capacity. Therefore many pundits feared that Topalov would not live up to expectations in Wijk aan Zee in 2007. However, once again he showed his uncompromising fighting chess and after a fascinating duel with Vishy Anand he shared tournament victory with the Indian. When in the mid-1990s Topalov burst into the world’s top twenty few people had ever heard of him. The Bulgarian had amassed his Elo-points on the Spanish circuit of open tournaments where he was incredibly successful and left the experts shaking their heads in incredulity. Was he really that strong? He was and he soon grew even stronger and secured a steady place among the elite. At the Moscow Olympiad in Moscow Topalov made headlines with his win over Kasparov and he started winning top tournaments. His first annus mirabilis was 1996 when he took (shared) first prize in Amsterdam (together with Kasparov), Dos Hermanas, Madrid and Novgorod. The hallmarks of Topalov, who resides in Salamanca, Spain, are his total concentration at the board, his aggressive play and his deep preparation.

4. Alexander Morozevich - Russia
Elo rating: 2765
World ranking: 4
Date of birth: July 18, 1977
Amber highlights: Overall winner in 2002, 2004 (shared with Kramnik) and 2006 (shared with Anand), second in 2005

Alexander Morozevich was absent both in Wijk aan Zee and in Morelia-Linares and we can only make guesses about his form. However, if his performance in the most recent events that he played are an indication, his fans can rest assured. At the European Team Championship in Crete he contributed heavily to the gold medals of the Russian team with a score of 6 out of 8, and at the Russian Super Final in Moscow he was in a class of his own. On his way to the title he scored an amazing six wins in a row, a unique achievement in a Russian championship.
In Nice ‘Moroz’ will be eager to avenge his performance of last year in his favourite tournament. His sixth place was in line with his rating, but certainly not in line with his expectations.
Six years ago Morozevich made the most sensational debut in the history of the Amber tournaments. Although he had virtually no experience in blindfold chess the Russian overcame this small handicap with astounding ease. Not only did he win the blindfold with an unbelievable score of 9 from 11, he also claimed overall victory.
By now we know that this astounding debut was not a one-off show. In his next appearance he tied for second and in 2004 he repeated his success by again winning the blindfold and sharing overall first with Kramnik. Three years ago he finished unshared second in the overall standings and in 2006 he was back on top again. In the overall standings he shared first place with Vishy Anand, a feat that depended for a large part on his stellar performance in the blindfold. Breaking his and Kramnik’s old record he scored 9,5 points from 11 games, an unheard of achievement at this level.
Morozevich has become a brand-name for mind-boggling chess ever since he made his international break-through at Lloyds Bank in 1994, where at the age of seventeen he took first prize with a staggering 10,5 out of 11 score. Much to the delight of his many fans, Morozevich is the living proof that chess is not only about computers and extreme preparation, but that the game still leaves ample room for unorthodox and daring experiments, even if in recent years he’s been mainly playing mainstream openings, postponing his unusual ideas till later phases of the game.

5. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov - Azerbaijan
Elo rating: 2760
World ranking: 6
Date of Birth: April 12, 1985
Amber highlights: this is his Amber debut

Shkakhriyar Mamedyarov makes his debut in the Amber Blindfold and Rapid tournament.  For the past few years the 22-year-old Azeri has been the leading player of his country, although the competition with his fellow-countryman Teimour Radjabov is tense. Mamedyarov first attracted attention on the international chess scene when in 2002 he won the European U-18 junior championship with a score of 10/11. One year later he won his first U-20 World Junior title. And another year later he repeated this success with an over-2900 performance rating.
Mamedyarov comes from a sports family. Both his sisters are active and successful chess players and his father is a former weight lifting champion. Playing lots of open tournaments and team competitions ‘Shakh’, as he is often called, steadily worked his way up to a 2700 rating, holding his own against top players and scoring heavily against the lesser gods. His breakthrough to the top came in 2006, when he won the Aeroflot Open in Moscow, the Reykjavik Open, the Baku Open, the Villa Cañada de Calatrava rapid tournament and, another rapid event, the Mainz Open. In the Essent tournament in Hoogeveen he shared first place with Judit Polgar, but took the title on tiebreak. In the next edition of this closed event in the north of the Netherlands he was even more dominant and took clear first place ahead of Ruslan Ponomariov and Loek van Wely.
His high rating has unavoidably earned him invitations to elite tournaments, but here his results have been less spectacular. Last year he had a fifty per cent score at the MTel Masters in Sofia and at the Sparkassen Chess Meeting in Dortmund, and finished on minus-1 in the Tal Memorial in Moscow. At the start of this year, in Wijk aan Zee, he finished shared ninth together with Veselin Topalov and Judit Polgar.
The consensus is that his sharp and unorthodox opening repertoire, that has been deadly against ‘regular’ grandmasters, is less effective in confrontations with the very best. In this respect the Amber tournament will be an interesting test for Mamedyarov, as he may hope to find ample compensation in his extraordinary speed chess skills and his natural feel for the game.  

6. Peter Leko - Hungary
Elo rating: 2753
World ranking: 8
Date of birth: September 8, 1979
Amber highlights: Overall 3rd in 2002 and 2005 (shared) and shared 2nd in 2003

7. Vasily Ivanchuk - Ukraine
Elo rating: 2751
World ranking: 9
Date of birth: March 18, 1969
Amber highlights: Overall winner in 1992, 2nd in 1996, 1997, 2000 (shared) and 2002 

 What would the Amber tournament be without Vasily Ivanchuk? In any case something quite different, as the Ukrainian grandmaster is the only player who has taken part in all Amber tournaments. In 1992 he was the overall winner and on various occasions he was the runner-up. Ivanchuk is one of the greatest players of modern time, both adored by chess lovers and admired by his colleagues, who have been regularly heard whispering: ‘Chuky, you’re a genius’. They also speak of ‘Planet Chuky’, to indicate that sometimes he is moving in different spheres.
When he came to Monaco last year, Ivanchuk was determined to avenge his poor showing in the Morelia-Linares tournament. His result had been such that he even feared he might not be invited to super-tournaments again. After a third place in Amber he embarked on an impressive tour that earned him lots of Elo-points and brought him the desired invitations. Playing almost incessantly he won one tournament after the other: the Capablanca Memorial in Havana with a record performance rating of 2877, the Aerosvit tournament in Foros with a TPR of 2823, the Montreal International with a TPR of 2857 and the traditional tournament in Merida, Mexico, where he beat Pentala Harikrishna in the final. In the first super-tournament he was invited to, the Tal Memorial in Moscow, he fared less, but he did win the ensuing World Blitz Championship. Things went better in Wijk aan Zee and Morelia-Linares, but nevertheless he lost 11 Elo points in these events. 

8. Levon Aronian – Armenia
Elo rating: 2739
World ranking: 10
Date of birth: October 6, 1982
Amber highlights: shared 2nd in the rapid in 2006

Following his recent shared win in Wijk aan Zee and his shared third place in Morelia-Linares, there is good reason to see Levon Aronian as one of the favourites in the Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament. In the space of a couple of years the Armenian number one has secured a firm place among the elite and has more than enough splendid results to his name to substantiate this claim.
Aronian had his international break-through in 2005 when he celebrated one success after the other and shot up to the fifth place in the world rankings (or even fourth place if we exclude Kasparov, who after all has stopped playing chess). Of course, these results didn’t suddenly appear out of the blue. After all he was already World Junior Champion under-12 as long ago as 1994 and overall World Junior Champion in 2002. His successes in 2005 included a shared first place in Gibraltar, first place in Nagorno-Karabakh, and, to cap it all, first place in the World Cup tournament in Khanty-Mansiysk, where he defeated Ponomariov in the final. That all this had not been a coincidence he proved in the 2006 Morelia-Linares tournament where after three weeks of tense fighting he claimed the one hundred thousand euro first prize with a win over Peter Leko with the black pieces in the last round. Later that year he also tied for first with the same Leko and Ruslan Ponomariov in the Tal Memorial.
Last year started excellently with a shared first place in the Corus tournament and when he arrived in Elista for the Candidates matches he was seen as one of the outspoken favourites. Rightly so, as he knocked out Magnus Carlsen and Alexey Shirov to qualify for the World Championship Tournament in Mexico where he had to settle for shared sixth place.
Levon Aronian’s debut in the 2006 Amber will not easily be forgotten. Aronian has never claimed to be a great theoretician, but the off-beat and sometimes outright weird openings that he confronted his opponents with caused both amazement and hilarity. Sometimes he was punished for his experiments, but even when he ended up in a totally lost position this did not necessarily mean the end of the game. As he likes to say with visible pleasure, ‘My friends call me a cheap tactician.’ His games last year were slightly less eccentric, but still we may wonder again what he has in store for his opponents this time.

9. Boris Gelfand - Israel
Elo rating: 2737
World ranking: 11
Date of birth: June 24, 1968
Amber highlights: Overall 5th in 2001 and 2002

After he had finished shared second in the World Championship Tournament in Mexico, one of the finest results in his career, Boris Gelfand confided that he had been proud of the words of a Russian journalist who had compared him to Paolo Maldini. Just like the Milan football star, who is about his age, Gelfand continues to dedicate himself religiously to his sport and feels that he can still play against the young guard.
Last year Israel’s number one fully concentrated on the world championship. Excellently prepared and with great determination he arrived in Elista for the Candidates’ matches and showed what he is still capable of. First he eliminated Rustam Kasimdzhanov in a fascinating battle and next he also got the better of Gata Kamsky. His dream had come true. As an opponent of the knock-out championships and other trivializations of chess, he was delighted to play in a ‘classical’ championship tournament and showed his delight with an outstanding result, shared second with Kramnik behind Anand.
Gelfand was born in Minsk when Belarus still belonged to the Soviet Union. The first big step in his impressive career was his win in the 1985 Soviet Junior Championship, which he followed up with winning the European Junior Championship. Easily the most memorable achievement in his early career was his win, ahead of 139(!) grandmasters at the Palma de Mallorca World Cup qualifier in 1989. Gelfand confidently continued to develop into a seasoned world class player who spends most of the time in the world’s top ten. He’s won countless first prizes in international competitions. He claimed top honours in Biel 1993, Dos Hermanas 1994, Belgrade 1995, Vienna 1996, Tilburg 1996 (shared with Jeroen Piket), Polanica Zdroj 1998 and 2000, and Cannes 2002. In 2003 he led the Israeli team to the silver medals at the European Team Championship. From his more recent victories we should mention his wins in Ashdod 2004, Pamplona 2004, Bermuda 2005 and Biel 2005. In the super-tournaments in Dortmund and Moscow in 2006 he finished half a point behind the winners. Gelfand is a highly experienced player with a vast knowledge of every aspect of the game, but fortunately for the spectators he has a penchant for sharp, uncompromising fights. Typically, he’s one of the world’s leading experts in what is probably the most popular opening, the Sicilian Najdorf.  
However, the tournaments he played in after Mexico he will try to forget as soon as possible. In the Tal Memorial he drew all his games and in Wijk aan Zee he shared bottom place, an unusual experience for a player of his stature. There’s no doubt that he will be highly motivated to do well in Nice.

10. Magnus Carlsen – Norway
Elo rating: 2733
World ranking: 13
Date of birth: November 30, 1990
Amber highlights: shared second in the rapid in his 2007 debut

Last year Magnus Carlsen made his Amber debut with a laudable eighth place in the overall rankings. No one doubts that he is aiming for more in this 17th edition. Only twelve months have passed, but this time we should already see the 17-year-old Norwegian as one of the clear favourites for overall victory, such has been his progress. In the first two super-tournaments that he played in, the 2006 Tal Memorial and the 2007 Corus tournament, Carlsen admirably held his own but failed to win any of the 22 games he played. In his two most recent tournaments, Corus last January and Morelia-Linares, which finished only one week ago, he won no fewer than ten games against the very best players. As a result he tied for first in Wijk aan Zee (the youngest player ever to do so) and finished clear second in Linares. His current Elo is 2733, 43 points higher than last year, but this rating is already outdated as well. Thanks to the 19,5 points he gained in Corus and Linares he will comfortably enter the world’s top ten on the April 1 Elo list.   
Other highlights from last year that should not be left unnamed are his shared second place in Linares and his win in the traditional Biel tournament.
Magnus Carlsen has been making headlines worldwide ever since he began his race for the grandmaster title. In the first month of 2004 he took the Corus C Group by storm and only three months later he made his third and final GM norm in Dubai. At the age of 13 years, 4 months and 26 days he was (at that time) the youngest grandmaster in the world. In the years that have gone by since that historic moment the Norwegian super talent hasn’t disappointed his followers. In rapid and blitz tournaments he’s drawn with Kasparov and even beaten Karpov and Anand, and also in ‘classical’ chess he’s been collecting outstanding results. At the 2005 World Cup tournament in Khanty-Mansiysk, Siberia, he became the youngest chess player in history to qualify for the Candidates’ matches for the world championship. Unfortunately for him the pairings were based on old Elo-lists and he was paired against top-seed Levon Aronian. In Elista, in the summer of last year, Carlsen put up a captivating fight against the Armenian, but ultimately had to bow for him in the tie-break games.
It goes without saying that Carlsen continues to be closely followed by the press. Thousands of articles have been written about him, a film has been made about his spectacular rise (The Prince of Chess) and a book has appeared (originally published as Wonderboy). Still, anyone who believes that he’s only obsessed with chess is wrong. He’s just as passionate about football, tennis or skiing.

11.Sergey Karjakin - Ukraine
Elo rating: 2732
World ranking: 14
Date of birth: January 12, 1990
Amber highlights: this is his Amber debut

After he had finished third in the World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk, Sergey Karjakin stated ‘I want to play in Linares.’ In other words the young Ukrainian felt ready to make another step forward in the so-called super-tournaments. A justified desire, as Karjakin continues to make staggering progress. In the past year he raised his Elo rating with an impressive 64(!) points thanks to, amongst others, excellent results in Foros (clear second behind Ivanchuk), the European Team Championships in Crete (4,5 out of 7) and the European Club Cup in Turkey (5 out of 7).
Despite this leap forward Karjakin was not invited to Wijk aan Zee or Linares, and his first confrontation with the very best takes place in Nice at the Amber tournament. This invitation he earned himself, by scoring the best result on the ‘Rising Stars’ team in the NH Ches Tournament in Amsterdam last summer. 
Although he’s ‘already’ eighteen years old and may call himself by rights a top grandmaster for quite some time already, Sergey Karjakin often continues to be billed as the youngest grandmaster of all time. Which is understandable, as he holds a unique record. The Ukrainian prodigy was only twelve years and seven months when in 2002 he earned the highest chess title.
Karjakin was born in Simferopol in the Crimea on Januray 12, 1990, and he was five years old when he learned to play chess. His development as a chess player gained momentum when, together with his parents, he moved to Kramatorsk, where the most promising Ukrainian talents were trained at the A.V.Momot chess school. He won countless junior championships in his own country and in 2001 he became U-12 Junior World Champion in Oropesa del Mar, Spain. As undeniable proof of his countrymen’s respect for his chess strength, Ruslan Ponomariov invited the 12-year-old prodigy as a second for his world championship match against Vasily Ivanchuk in the winter of 2002. In the meantime the Karjakins have returned to Simferopol from where he travels all over the world thanks to an incessant stream of invitations. Within a few years’ time he has grown into an experienced grandmaster who need not fear anybody. In 2004 he was one of the pillars of the Ukrainian team that claimed gold at the Calvia Olympiad. Two years later, in Turin, the Ukrainians had to settle for a more modest result, but Karjakin again chalked up one of the highest scores.
Last year Karjakin was a guest at the Amber tournament for a week, which was the second extra prize he won in the 2006 NH Tournament (the first extra prize in that year was claimed by Carlsen, who qualified to play in Amber). With great enthusiasm he followed the games on the monitors in the VIP-room. This time he can move the pieces himself in the playing room.

12. Loek van Wely – The Netherlands
Elo rating: 2681
World ranking: 35
Date of birth: October 7, 1972
Amber highlights: Overall 7th in 2000

 Loek van Wely will be playing in the Amber tournament for the 12th time. Over the years the encounters with the elite in Monaco have been important challenges for the Dutchman, who in 2001 occupied tenth place in the world rankings with a 2714 rating and is eager to return to those regions. As in the previous two years he’s skipped the Aeroflot Open and spent more than a month preparing for the event, working on his openings and his physical fitness.
Van Wely earned his reputation of an uncompromising battler with a merciless will to win with a string of successes in the strongest open tournaments of the world in the early 1990’s. In fact, he won them all. The Berlin Open he claimed in 1991, the World Open in Philadelphia in 1992 and finally the New York Open in 1995. But apart from further open successes in Antwerp 1996 and Amsterdam 2001 he also came out on top in the closed tournament in Polanica Zdroj in 1999.
Despite these achievements, Van Wely reached the conclusion that he had to change his style if he wanted to be more stable in closed top tournaments and secure a place in the highest echelons of the world rankings. The first signs were encouraging, although there have also been set-backs. In 2004, at the Aeroflot Open in Moscow, in a field of over a hundred grandmasters, his play was impressive and he only missed first place by a hair’s breadth. In the summer of 2005 he claimed the Dutch championship for the sixth time in a row, equalling the old record of consecutive wins of Max Euwe. His best result in 2006 was his win at the Foxwoods Open, but he failed to win his seventh Dutch title. In 2007 he didn’t play the Dutch championship at all due to a disagreement with the chess federation and his performances in the events he did play were often not in line with his ambitions. His best result was a shared third place (with a.o. Svidler and Shirov) at the Aerosvit tournament in Foros. Given his eternal wish to improve, last year probably most important was his work for Vladimir Kramnik, who asked him to be his second for the World Championship Tournament in Mexico and repeated this invitation for the Tal Memorial in Moscow. Going by the play he showed in Wijk aan Zee, Van Wely learned a lot from this experience, although it was a great pity that he didn’t exploit the positions he got. Had he used all his chances he could have finished amongst the first three, but spoiling numerous opportunities he ended up in shared last place. The ambitious Dutchman will definitely try to put the experience he gained to better use in Nice.