Tata Steel Rd12: Giri claims clear second

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 twelve - Masters

The great winners of the past overlooking the Amateur Tournament

Some players are more amateur than others; IM Sopiko Guramashvili hardly fits in that category

Van Wely, Loek ½-½ Jobava, Baadur
The players were able to find a repetition around move 19 and the draw suited both sides.

Radjabov, Teimour ½-½ Hou Yifan
Radjabov seems to really enjoy positions with symmetrical structure in which he holds the tiniest of pressures. This is what happened today in his Catalan against Hou Yifan, but his initiative quickly dissolved into nothing in a rook endgame that was promptly drawn.

Hou Yifan held the pressure without problems and drew comfortably

Ivanchuk, Vasil ½-½ Caruana, Fabiano
A complex Grunfeld saw a few fireworks near the end:

Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime ½-½ Aronian, Levon
MVL achieved nothing in this Catalan that slowly steered towards a draw.

Ding Liren ½-½ Carlsen, Magnus
Carlsen had a few issues equalizing with his QGD. He even thought his position was "suspicious". He seemed to come out of it ok, and some tactics at the end were simple for the World Champion to calculate. The game fizzled into a drawn opposite colored bishop endgame.

Had Ding Liren won the game the tournament would
have blown wide open, but he had no chances to do so

Magnus Carlsen finds himself in a relatively comfortable position; half a point ahead of second place and playing the lowest rated player in the tournament with white to finish. That being said, Ivan Saric did beat him the last time they played...

Giri, Anish 1-0 So, Wesley
Talk about making your own life difficult! This game was reminiscent of Giri's duel against Ding Liren - again the Dutch number one (actually, World number five according to the live ratings!) had a great start to the game. It landed them in a queen endgame where White had an extra passed pawn on the a-file, ready to roll forward.

Giri, somehow, again, managed to not find the correct path. He missed several opportunities to help his pawn forward until he messed up the endgame so badly that it was a tablebase draw. That being said, these kinds of queen endgames are almost impossible for a human to play precisely. So was unable to find the exact continuation to draw the game and eventually Giri was managed to promote his pawn.

This is Wesley So's first defeat since April of last year and it puts Giri in a great position in the tournament - with the correct results he could come out as the winner of 2015 Wijk aan Zee!

"Still talking about chess? When are we having dinner...?!" Giri's girlfriend IM Sopiko Guramashvili and
his coach GM Vladimir Tukmakov waited patiently until the marathon game was over.

Saric, Ivan 1-0 Wojtaszek, Radoslaw
This was a rather strange game. The players followed the Caruana-Gelfand game from a couple of years ago, but very oddly they did not seem familiar with it at all. The excellent annotations of that game by Pavlovic can be found on your Megabase and indicate that White's 26th move is bad, and specifically gives the refutation.

Ivan Saric didn't have to do anything special,
simply wait for Radoslaw Wojtaszek to make bad moves

Either way, Wojtaszek managed to get an acceptable position, but he kept making strange decisions; first trading his knight for the bishop on c4 and then not taking the free pawn on h4 when he had a chance. Slowly he self-destructed and Saric simply marched his king and pawns up the board.

Replay Masters games

Select games from the dropdown menu above the board

Masters standings after twelve rounds

Round twelve - Challengers

Another exciting round, but again it is Wei Yi grabs the headlines. His demolition of Anne Haast was fantastic. Notice how quickly fashion is assimilated! The game followed one of the Masters games that was played only a few days before:

Robin Van Kampen also had a very nice victory crushing Vladimir Potkin. In a battle of some of the highest rated players in the event Sam Shankland continues his excellent streak by defeating Erwin l'Ami.

Replay Challengers games

Challengers standings after twelve 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.