Tata Steel Rd10: Relative peace from The Hague

The Tata Steel Chess Tournament has two main tournaments. They are played according to the 'round robin' system, whereby each competitor plays in turn against every other during the tournament. The Tata Steel Masters has 14 participants and the Tata Steel Challengers has 14 participants. Both groups start on January 10th 2015 and the last round is on January 25th. All rounds in Wijk aan Zee begin at 13.30 hours, except for the last round on January 25th, which begins at 12.00 hours. The time control is 100 minutes for 40 moves, followed by 50 minutes for 20 moves, then 15 minutes for the remaining moves with 30 seconds cumulative increment for each move starting from the first move.

Admission to the playing hall in Wijk aan Zee, Rotterdam and The Hague is free of charge

Round ten - Masters

Daniel King shows the game Jobava vs Caruana

Today the round was played in The Hague.

At the famous Binnenhof, the governmental center of The Netherlands.

The players were given a private art tour. Here they have the chance to admire
Johannes Vermeer's 17th-century painting Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Well, why not?

All of the players posing in front of Paulus Potter's The Bull

This masterpiece is an oil painting and dates back to 1647

Anish Giri, maybe slightly overwhelmed

Hou Yifan during the art tour

Van Wely, Loek 1-0 Hou Yifan
A disaster for the World Women's Champion. She obtained a reasonable position from the opening, but it spiraled out of control quickly:

Ivanchuk, Vassily ½-½ Carlsen, Magnus
The Ragozin employed by Carlsen gave him easy equality. Ivanchuk repeated moves in a position where he already had nothing.

Ding Liren ½-½ So, Wesley
This was seemingly a very exciting game, but it was all prep. The players followed the old game Anatoli Vaisser - Efim Geller from the Sochi Chigorin Memorial back in 1982. Actually this game in Wijk aan Zee even finished a couple of moves before the Vaisser-Geller one.

Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime ½-½ Wojtaszek, Radoslaw
This game actually promised to be very exciting. White castled queenside and sacrificed two pawns to keep his opponent's king in the center! Unfortunately he was forced to cash in his initiative soon after that. The resulting opposite colored bishop endgame was very clearly heading towards a draw.

Saric, Ivan 0-1 Giri, Anish

Joshua Friedel Josh was born in 1986 in New Hampshire, USA and is currently living in Wisconsin. He obtained his international master title in 2005 and his grandmaster in 2008. He has participated in six US Championships, including a tie for fourth in 2008. Major Open tournament victories include: the 2003 Eastern Open, 2005 Berkeley Masters, 2008 National Open, 2009 Edmonton International, 2009 North American Open, 2010 Saint Louis Open, 2010 American Open, 2013 Chicago Open.

Giri felt pretty confident!

Jobava, Baadur 0-1 Caruana, Fabiano
Jobava played his usual, creative chess. However it, again, landed him in trouble. He was more or less able to clear himself from his nightmarish position until disaster struck:

Radjabov, Teimour ½-½ Aronian, Levon
Amazingly, the game's novelty came in move 32. The stem game was Polgar-Aronian, back in 2008. That game ended in a draw and Radjabov's improvement does not cause a real impression on the evaluation of the position, which is that White is a tiny bit better but will very likely end in a draw.

A high rated game analysis

Replay Masters games

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Masters standings after ten rounds

Round ten - Challengers

An important day as Wei Yi was able to once again catch David Navara at the top of the leaderboard. Erwin l'Ami bravely sacrficied a piece against the Chinese prodigy, but it never provided enough compensation.

Ari Dale held on to a completely lost position against Valentina Gunina when the Russian player made her kingside situation much more complicated than it should have been.

Salem scored a win that he absolutely needed against Timman, who continues having a tough time in the tournament.

Last and certainly least Anne Haast and David Klein played for 133 moves, 50+ that could probably have been spared and 17 that definitely should have been spared.

Replay Challengers games

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Challengers standings after ten rounds

Photos by Alina l'Ami for the official website

Schedule and results - Masters group

Schedule and results - Challengers group

Venues

The tournament has a slight change this year. Most of the rounds will be played in the traditional De Moriaan Community Centre in Wijk aan Zee, but two of the rounds will be played elsewhere. Last year the tournament traveled to the National Museum in Amsterdam and the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven.

This year the fifth round will be held in De Rotterdam. De Rotterdam is a building on the Wilhelminapier in Rotterdam, designed by Rem Koolhaas in 1998.

Rotterdam is ready to host Tata Steel!

The tenth round will be played in the International Press Cnetre Niewuspoort in the Hague. Councillor Karsten Klein of The Hague had this to say: "The Hague is honored to be able to host the Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2015 at the heart of the Dutch parliamentary democracy. Our city has a long history of international chess tournaments, a tradition which is continued in this manner. "

Commentary on Playchess

This being the first major event of the year, it is clear that we will be bringing you live commentary on our server www.playchess.com!

Links Official tournament site Master Games in PGN Challenger Games in PGN 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 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.