Tata Steel Rd11: A day for the Chinese

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 eleven - Masters

Daniel King shows highlights of round 11

Giri, Anish 1-0 Van Wely, Loek
An up and down, interesting game. Giri's attack was threatening and strong. Neither player figured out how to deal with the threats with precision, which gave us a very entertaining game:

The eyes of a true gladiator: Loek Van Wely

So, Wesley 1-0 Saric, Ivan
Things were heating up until Saric made a crucial couple of mistakes:

2788 live rating: Wesley So, 12 points ahead of America's #2 Hikaru Nakamura

Wojtaszek, Radoslaw 0-1 Ding Liren
A fantastically complicated game, and one of the most difficult ones for me to annotate in this tournament. It was simply too hard! The positions were always murky and both sides had an incredible number of resources. Wojtaszek bravely sacrificed a pawn, and Ding Liren did not react the best way. After reaching a winning endgame... Wojtaszek managed to lose it! To be fair, it was still very complicated, take a look!

Understanding the KID seems almost impossible, but Ding Liren manages to do it!

Carlsen, Magnus ½-½ Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime
A complicated Grunfeld landed the players in a weird endgame. Both sides' pair of bishops were the last remaining pieces on the board, but White managed to obtain an extra pawn. This was offset by Black's powerful passed a-pawn, always menacing. The game fizzled to a draw as both sides basically ran out of pawns to advance.

A fighting draw between the leaders

This brave, and somewhat suicidal, c-pawn is the reason the Grunfeld exists

Aronian, Levon ½-½ Ivanchuk, Vasil
Despite having a slight advantage from the opening, and always having some kind of pressure over the majority of the board, Aronian was unable to put Ivanchuk in serious difficulties. After running out of pawns on the queenside it was clear that his majority on the kingside would be insufficient to play for a win.

Levon Aronian, perhaps thinking back on his tournament

Caruana, Fabiano ½-½ Radjabov, Teimour
With 4.Nf3 and 5.g3 in the Nimzo-Indian Fabiano Caruana and Teimour Radjabov followed famous predecessors: In the first game of their 1985 match Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov had this line on the board. Kasparov scored an impressive win and the previously obscure variation became famous. However, the game between Caruana and Radjabov was much less spectacular. After an early exchange of queens an equal endgame arose and after 41 moves the players settled for a draw.

Hou Yifan 1-0 Jobava, Baadur
Baadur fought hard to come back from an awful position in the opening. He was almost successful, but, as usual in this tournament, he ended up imploding.

Hou Yifan scores her first victory in Wijk aan Zee!
Well, at least this year, she won thrice last time she played here.

Replay Masters games

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Masters standings after eleven rounds

Round eleven - Challengers

Another interesting round in the Challengers, but the news of the day is certainly Wei Yi's victory. With his performance he is simply skyrocketing in rating, reaching 2695... one more win against a similar-rated opponent and he will cross the magic 2700 barrier!

Nava now trails by half a point as he only managed a draw against Gunina.

Tournament leader: Wei Yi setting himself up to participate in the Masters section next year

Replay Challengers games

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Challengers standings after eleven 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.