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 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 twelve report

By GM Alejandro Ramirez

There are some matches that are almost always guaranteed to create sparks. Very creative players usually also tend to be very aggressive, and their somewhat unorthodox chess often works magic for them, while sometimes it makes them suffer painful defeats. Hikaru Nakamura is most certainly one of the most talented and unusual players in the top ten, and his brilliancies are easy to remember – for example who can forget his famous Qxf2+ sacrifice against Krasenkow?

However, today, he was playing someone who people are starting to wonder if he really is human. The unstoppable Magnus Carlsen is not a player who will get confused in complications, or take any wrong turns... or make any bad moves!

Today’s game started out with the unusual Kalashnikov variation of the Sicilian, Magnus’ treatment of g3 has been seen many times before to which Nakamura chose the hyper-aggressive 12...h4!? According to the kibitzing Garry Kasparov, after the awkward 18... Nh4?! 18.0-0 Hikaru was strategically lost. He had to play 17... Qh4+ 18. Kf1 Ne7, "after which Black might still be lost, but at least he would go down kicking." After Carlsen established that bind on the center Black's pieces were too disconnected, and White's attack rolled forward powerfully. Carlsen wiped the American off the board and won Tata Steel with a round to spare!

Erwin L'Ami (above) wonderfully handled the Najdorf against Vishy Anand, and it seemed that the World Champion was against the ropes. 22... Nd4! might have given White too many problems, but slowly L'Ami let go of his initiative.

After a series of bad moves by Black the World Champion was able to get an extra pawn in the endgame, and he was not going to waste such an advantage two games in a row.

Aronian-Giri was a solid English in which not much happened, a draw was agreed after many exchanges and it seems that second place will go to whoever does better tomorrow between Aronian and Anand, as they both have eight points.

Almost as solid as this game was the game Harikrishna-Wang Hao who traded off into an equal rook endgame.

The Catalan is a nightmare opening for many players. It is very solid, gives Black nearly no winning chances, and if they slip White can quickly pounce positionally on the slightest mistake.

However Sergey Karjakin is not the type of player to slip at any time, and he didn’t against Peter Leko and was able to achieve a draw.

Another opening system that is annoying for Black is when in the Slav structures White quickly attacks the light squared bishop to obtain the classic pair of bishops edge. Van Wely did precisely this against Caruana and obtained a very comfortable position. The tactical melee at the end was well calculated by the Dutchman, who after obtaining king safety was unstoppably mating the Italian.

Last but certainly not least Hou Yifan shows that, apparently, her best results come with the black pieces. She has won three times in Wijk Aan Zee and they have all been with black. A slightly unusual Ragozin/Vienna opening gave both sides an equal game, and it remained so until the almost inexplicable 23.Ne5? move by Sokolov. Maybe he was banking on the fact that after Yifan took the knight on e5 his pawns would become rather powerful.

Ivan Sokolov in an interview after the game (see video links below)

But in this case the threat was far stronger than the execution... Nimzowitsch style! The knight on e5 was never taken, but since it was constantly en prise it kept White's pieces tied down. Eventually when the knight retreated the f4 pawn was up for grabs, and the Chinese player powerfully pressed on her advantage for a very clean victory.

Yifan's mother Wang Qian with the thirteen times Dutch women's champion Peng Zhaoqin

All photos (except the video grab of Sokolov) were provided by Frans Peeters

Replay all the games of the round on our JavaScript player

Magnus Carlsen analyses his game against Hikaru Nakamura

Current standings

Live world ratings as of January 26, 2013, 18:04 GMT

GM Danny King Play of the Day – Magnus Carlsen vs Hikaru Nakamura

And in case you can't get enough of this game, here's analysis by Kingscrusher Tryfon Gavriel:

Video impressions after round twelve by Vijay Kumar

Results of the B and C Groups

Standings in the B Group

Standings in the C Group

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 14:30h 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 twelve

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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