Norway Chess 2013

The Norway Chess 2013 Super Tournament is one of the strongest super tournaments ever and is held from May 7th to 18th 2013 in several different locations in the Stavanger-region of Norway: Quality Residence Hotel, Sandnes (six rounds); Stavanger Konserthus, Stavanger (one round); Fabrikkhallen til Aarbakke AS, Bryne (one round); Flor & Fjære, Sør-Hidle (one round).

Tourney structure: nine-round round robin Time control: 100 minutes/40 moves + 50 minutes/20 moves + 15 minutes + 30 seconds/move starting with the first move Game start: daily 15:00 (server time), last round 12:00 Rest day: 11th May and 16th May Rules & Tiebreak Rules: The “Sofia rules” will apply. A tie for first place will be decided by a blitz match.

Round four

The spectators enjoy some rare top-notch chess at Bryne

A remarkable round in many ways, and one that had fans deservedly glued to their screens (or their seats for the lucky ones there). Naturally attention gravitated to the game by Magnus Carlsen with Peter Svidler, and the question was whether this would be the Norwegian’s first win of the tournament.

Magnus Carlsen trying to figure out what is not clicking in the tournament

The opening was certainly exotic, and Carlsen’s Sicilian Moscow ended up with a strange development after Svidler played the very poor 6…Ne5. Sadly for his home fans, Magnus was unable to make the most of his chances and several imprecisions let Svidler reestablish the balance which he never let go of. By move 43 a disappointed Carlsen gave up and they drew. In the post-mortem, he was his usual critical self and said that he would need to up his game not just to reposition himself to try and win the tournament, but to even win a game.

Anand could not stop Nakamura

Those watching Vishy Anand against Hikaru Nakamura certainly had their fill of gritty chess as Nakamura came up with a concept in the Ruy Lopez that was perhaps underestimated by the world champion. After equalizing the American showed fighting resources that allowed him to fight for more and his wish came true as Anand failed to find the best resources. It was an impressive display by Nakamura as he pushed his way forward and outlasted his opponent to take him into sole second. An interesting statistic worth noting in this is only two players in the world have positive scores against Anand: Garry Kasparov and… Hikaru Nakamura.

GM Gilberto Milos annotates Anand-Nakamura:

This might easily have been the game of the round were it not for the amazing feat by Sergey Karjakin as he scored his fourth straight win, this time against the world number two, Levon Aronian. The opening was exactly the same played by Karjakin and Hammer in round two, but Aronian came prepared with a serious improvement over the Norwegian’s play.  Somehow it did not work out as he planned and the Russian first equalized and then proceeded to outplay his opponent to beat him in an impressive display.

When asked when the last time he had started with four in four, Karjakin replied, “I don’t know, maybe when I was ten…”

GM Gilberto Milos annotates Aronian-Karjakin:

Sergey Karjakin analyzes his game against Levon Aronian, showing what he saw

GM Daniel King provides video analysis of Aronian vs Karjakin 

Tomorrow he faces Magnus Carlsen and the tournament may easily be decided by what happens there.

Veselin Topalov seemed on his way to a fairly smooth victory over Jon Hammer, but lost his way in the endgame and was forced to share the point. Wang Hao and Teimour Radjabov played an interesting Nimzo-Indian Saemisch with 4.f3 that drew, but it turned out that the Azeri was walking into some opening preparation Hao had done over two years ago. While the commentators complimented the Chinese player on his remarkable memory, Hao tried to shrug it off as nothing special. Even Radjabov refused to let that one slide and pointed out that over those two plus years Wang Hao would have looked and prepared at least fifty other lines and openings, and to be able to casually recall some old material he had prepared without looking at it again was definitely remarkable.

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Levon Aronian and Wang Hao enjoy a moment in the parking lot near the chessmobiles

Pictures by the official site

Standings after four rounds

Playchess commentary schedule

Pairings and results of Norway Chess 2013

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.