Norway Chess 2015 preview

The 2015 Norway Chess Tournament is upon us! This is the first leg of the much anticipated Grand Chess Tour - a series of three Super Tournaments that include Norway Chess 2015, the Sinquefield Cup and the London Chess Classic.

Norway Chess has in only a matter of a few years grown to be one of the world’s biggest chess tournaments. Norway Chess has proven from the start to be a world-class event. Magnus Carlsen is the proud ambassador of Norway Chess and we have had top ranked players as well as prominent guests such as chess-legend, Garry Kasparov who will return again this year.

The third edition of the Norway Chess tournament runs from June 15th to June 26th, and will mostly be played in Stavanger, Norway. These are the participants:

These are the nine Grand Chess Tour players plus Jon Ludvig Hammer, who won the qualifier tournament last month. In the Grand Chess Tour, every hosting city gets to determine their own wildcard, and they can choose it in any method they prefer. Norway decided to go for an invitational qualifier tournament that was won by Hammer.

Notable absentees are Vladimir Kramnik and Wesley So, both declined to participate in Norway (and the Grand Chess Tour) due to a previous commitment with Dortmund, which starts on the 27th (though Caruana is participating in both, Kramnik and So simply felt they were too close to each other).

Another notable absentee is the two time winner of Norway, Sergey Karjakin. He will be unable to defend his title he was not invited to play the Grand Chess Tour (which only invited the top-10 players of the World in the January 2015 list). He was asked to play in the qualifier event but he declined, noting that he felt he had the right to play without having to earn a qualification.

Norway will be the first part of the Grand Chess Tour. The prizes for the tournament, and in the tour, are quite high. Each event will have the following prizes:

On top of the winnings per tournament, the winners of the tour will receive:

The way that this is determined is by accumulating tour points, as follows:

*the winner outright of an event receives 13 points, if it is determined by a playoff then the player earns 12.

The organizers have decided on different methods for determining the pairing numbers in their tournaments. Norway, however, is sticking to their guns and using a blitz tournament for it. The pairings for the blitz tournament are already up!

(having the opponent's pairing number on the right hand side means that player is White. For example in round one Nakamurua is white vs. Topalov).

Most of the events will be held at the Hotel Scandic Stavanger Forus, but a couple of rounds will not be played there, including the inaugural Blitz event.

Finally there are two very interesting things about this tournament. The first is that the Norway 2015 Chess Tournament will have two official commentary teams. Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam and GM Jan Gustafsson will be providing commentary on the official website, while the main commentary team will be doing it from... Saint Louis, Missouri! The beloved trio of Jennifer Shahade, Yasser Seirawan and Maurice Ashley will be doing their commentary from the studio at the Saint Louis Chess Club.

Maurice, Jenn and Yasser and the whole studio in
Saint Louis will bring the highest quality commentary. Photo from www.uschesschamps.com

Another unusual detail of this event is the "confession box" that will be used. In Norway the players will be able to speak in front of the camera... during the game! This was something that the organizers tried out in the EnterCard Qualifier (the qualifier to Norway chess).

None of the other players will be able to hear him while this happens, and the players that are in the confession box do not have interaction with other people. According to the main organizer, Joran "JJ" Aulin-Jansson, this is completely legal according to the rules of chess. The use of the confession box, is, of course, completely voluntary.

The festivities start tomorrow with the blitz event! Make sure to tune in in one of the official websites given below, or on www.playchess.com!

Links Official tournament site Grand Chess Tour site The games will be 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 13 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.