ACP Classic and Sparkassen Chess Meeting

For several weeks, there were no major tournaments to follow, but now there will be an abundance of top level chess. The ACP Classic and Sparkassen Chess Meeting start on Saturday, and in case that isn't enough, Biel 2014 begins on July 14.

The word "classic" is taken quite seriously in the ACP tournament. It revives the practice of adjournments(!) and the long time control of 40 moves in 2.5 hours. Your "old" blogger (23 is old for a chess player - look at all those kids in the local tournaments) has never seen a single adjournment and never played at a rate slower than 40 in 2 hours with a 5 second delay (except for correspondence games). Since these conditions are so unusual in modern chess, there may be an extra element of uncertainty that can't be captured in the forecast model. With that caveat in mind, here are the predictions:

The Sparkassen Chess Meeting features stars such as Caruana and Kramnik. It's a fairly standard 8 player round robin.