75. Tata Steel Chess Tournament

This event is taking place from January 12-27. The venue is as usual the traditional De Moriaan Center in the Dutch sea resort of 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. The tournament has three Grandmaster Groups, which have 14 players and are held as full round robins (each competitor plays against every other). The rate of play for all three groups 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.

Round five report

By GM Alejandro Ramirez

Wijk Aan Zee may be below freezing, but the players are making sure that the temperature in the playing hall remains super high! Fighting chess continued today with multiple wins, most of them by Black!

Of course the tournament has been so far full of surprises. This round stabilized things a little as a lot of the favorites won their encounters. First of all Aronian showed his class and won a very simple game against Sokolov. The Dutch GM was probably a little too trigger happy with 16.Bg5?! and dxe6?! and after losing too much material he simply had to resign.

Aronian: "Of course I am very pleased that I managed to actually score a win, although I have to say
that it only happened because of my opponent's big mistake 15.h3, which is of course untimely.

In another game where White was too trigger happy and Black simply munched on all the material being thrown his way, Nakamura easily defeated Hou Yifan. In a weird dragon the Chinese GM followed the old maxim that you simply sacrificed pawns in the kingside to take them back later. Except she never was able to do so and in the end was just down pawns.

Leko outplayed Caruana in a very nice, model Spanish. He really showed why having that c4 square is particularly powerful. After obtaining a locked down queenside, he proceeded to launch an attack on the kingside that could not be countered. The computers did not agree with his plan, but I really liked it. Caruana saw no defense and collapsed quickly.

Karjakin-Giri wasn’t too exciting, as a bunch of pieces came off the board and it was just a draw. But sadly that was a thrill fest compared to Anand-Carlsen, which was really super boring and nothing happened. But it is very worthwhile listening to Vishy describing the course of the game:

I will finish the wrap up with two spectacular games. The first was Harikrishna-Van Wely. In the Scheveningen structure it has always been unclear to me exactly how White develops an initiative on the kingside after doubling on the h-file, as it always seemed to me that Black could hold the kingside with a timely h5 or Nf8. Hari shows us the way, and finishes it off with a couple of moves that you are for sure going to see in the tactics manuals that will be published in the next coming years.

Harikrishna comments on his game in the postgame analysis in the press centre in Wijk aan Zee

Even cooler was the finish to the game L’Ami-Wang Hao. After a very weak opening by White, the Chinese player had all the trumps in the position. A huge majority on the queenside looked threatening, but he converted it into a queen much more rapidly than I could imagine! His first piece sacrifice with 30… b3! is great, but his final flourish with Rd1+ is simply spectacular. A must watch!

We can only hope that the games will continue to be as interesting as they have been. Tata Steel A has been a fantastic start to the year.

Replay all the games of the round on our JavaScript player

Current standings

GM Danny King Play of the Day – Harikrishna vs van Wely

Results of the B and C Groups

Commentary schedule

There is 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 p.m. and lasts 2 to 2½ hours, with breaks in between. A round-up show is provided at 8 PM server time. Commentary is available, by the following experts:

Interviews with players after round five

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN: Group A – Group B – Group C 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.

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