Wijk Aan Zee: Tata Steel Super-GM tournament starts soon!

Information and schedule

This event starts with an opening ceremony on Friday January 13th. The first round is played on Saturday 14th, the last on Sunday, January 29th, 2012. The venue is as usual the traditional De Moriaan Center in Wijk aan Zee. The tournament has taken place since 1938 and was known as the Corus Chess Tournament. The Indian company Tata Steel bought Corus (for US $7.6 billion) in 2006 and the chess event way renamed accordingly.

Wijk aan Zee (pronounced vyke ahn zeh – to rhyme with "bike on say") is a small wind-swept town on the coast of the North Sea in the municipality of Beverwijk in the province of North Holland of the Netherlands.

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The tournament takes place in three Grandmaster Groups, with a number of amateur events being held at the same time. The three Grandmaster tournaments have 14 players each and are full round robins (each competitor plays against every other).

History

The event has been held since 1938, when it was a four-player round robin played on three days. The sponsor was Hoogoven and the venue Beverwijk, a town close to Wijk where many players today take their dinner. From 1940 on Max Euwe participated, but the tournament, which in 1942 turned into a six player event, and in 1943 to eight. The final year of WWII, 1945, was the only time the tournament was not staged. From 1946 it becames a ten-player event, with some exceptions: 12 players in 1953, 18 in 1963, and then 16 players from 1964 onwards. In 1980 the first 14-player tournament was held (and won by Walter Brown and Yasser Seirawan), and that's the way it stayed, with some exceptions from 1993-1995. From 1996 onwards it reverted to fourteen players and has stayed that way until today. In 1968 it moved to Wijk aan Zee, and in 2000 it was renamed Corus, after the main sponsor. You can click on any of the tournaments listed below for participants, results, cross tables, etc.

In the lists below you can also click the players for full information

You will find full statistics for all players in all tournaments here.

Participants of Tata Steel 2012

The participants of the 74th Chess Tournament Tata Steel is the strongest of its - long and rich - history. It features eleven of the top twenty chess players in the world. With an average rating of 2754, it exceeds the previous record of 2740 held by the 2008 edition of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament. The current 'rookie' in the A-Group, Vugar Gashimov from Azerbaijan, is the current World number ten.

Also of note is Veselin Topalov, who has played very little following his defeat in the world championship match against World Champion Anand in 2010, and Boris Gelfand, who will be Anand's next challenger in May.

The defending Tata Steel Chess champion Hikaru Nakamura from America, returns. The Dutch contribution to the A-group of the tournament is the 17-year-old Anish Giri, who is fresh from a brilliant win at Reggio Emilia just days ago, and the talented Loek van Wely, a regular in the A-Group who returns after a year's sabbatical.

Grandmaster Group A

Included in the participants of Grandmaster groups B and C of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament are no fewer than eight women. These aren't in a separate women's event, but the main groups. Among them, the reigning European champion Viktorija Cmilyte, who leads the B group. The other two female participants in this group are Kateryna Lahno (fifth in the world) and the young Dronavalli Harika (20) from India. Reigning European champion Vladimir Potkin will also be making his his debut in Wijk aan Zee in this group. The organizing committee is pleased to announce that former two-time winner, Jan Timman, accepted his invitation to play in the B group. Note that in the history of the event he holds the second highest record of wins scored in the tournament. Though unlikely to debunk Donner just yet, who can say whether the great Dutch player won't overtake him in time?

Grandmaster Group B

The grandmaster group C features the debuts of Dutch youth players Lisa Schut (17) and Anne Haast (18). There are three other women in this group, the Armenian grandmaster Elina Danielian (living in Groningen), as well as the German and Indian players Elisabeth Paehtz and Tania Sachdev.

Also two-time Dutch junior champion Lars Ootes (20) is among the participants, and Daan Brandenburg, who earlier this year gained the grandmaster title. Both Ootes and Brandenburg were not previously in either of the master groups. One notable name in the C group is that of Matthew Sadler, the Netherlands-based Englishman. Though officially an amateur chess player, who now debuts in Wijk aan Zee, this former top-100 player has just come back from two impressive tournament victories in Barcelona and Oslo, and is back in the elite, ranked 88th in the world.

Completing the roster is 19-year-old Indian grandmaster Baskaran Adhiban, who earned his spot by winning the Cultrual Village Tournament qualifier held in WIjk Aan Zee in October 2011.

Grandmaster Group C

The 74th Tata Steel Chess Tournament will take place from January 13 to 29, 2012 in the sports hall Moriaan in Wijk aan Zee. Admission is free to the public.

Rate of play
For all three groups the rate of play is 100 minutes for 40 moves, then 50 minutes for 20 moves and finally 15 minutes for the rest of the game, with a 30 seconds/move increment starting with the first move of the game.

Location: The tournament takes place in the De Moriaan Community Centre (Dorpsduinen 4, 1949 EG Wijk aan Zee). There is running commentary on the games of the Grandmaster Groups in a special Chess Pavilion, on the Village Green in Wijk aan Zee (one minute walk from De Moriaan).

Schedule (playing days)

Games begin at 13:30h local time (CET), except for the last round on January 29th, which begins at 12:00h. There are three rest days, on January 18th, 23th, and 26th.

Commentary

There will be full broadcast of all games on the official site and on the Playchess server, which will provide live audio commentary of the most interesting games (free for Premium members) starting at 15:00h for each round, 14:00h for the final round.

Commentary begins at approx. 3 PM and lasts 2-2.5 hours with breaks in between. A round up show is provided at 8 PM server time.

 
A sample of video from Wijk Aan Zee 2011 with GM Daniel King

Seirawan comments the 2010 World Championship

Pelletier and Carlsen comment their game in Biel 2011  

 
IM Lawrence Trent provided colorful commentary during the London Chess Classic
and is the author of a DVD on the Two Knights Defense.

Links

• Official web site
• Where is Wijk aan Zee?
• ChessBase: Wijk 2011 (winner Hikaru Nakamura)
• ChessBase: Wijk 2010 (winner: Magnus Carlsen)
• ChessBase: Wijk 2009 (winner: Sergey Karjakin)
• ChessBase: Wijk 2008 (winners: Aronian, Carlsen)
• ChessBase: Wijk 2007 (winners: Aronian, Topalov, Radjabov)
• ChessBase: Wijk 2006 (winners: Anand, Topalov)
• ChessBase: Wijk 2005 (winner: Peter Leko)
• ChessBase: Wijk 2004 (winner: Viswanathan Anand)