Tata Steel Rd2: Caruana wins again, event heats up

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 two - Masters

Before we being our report, we would like to take the time to remember Vugar Gashimov, a great player, and former participant of the Wijk Aan Zee super-tournament, who passed away far too early, exactly one year ago.

Not Magnus Carlsen, but maybe better: Kaja Marie Snare from Norwegian TV2 is here to cover the event live...

While the studio analyzes the games with a live show from Norway!

Van Wely, Loek ½-½ Wojtaszek, Radoslaw
Van Wely might have some trouble sleeping tonight. After outplaying Wojtaszek powerfully after the middlegame and beautifully exploiting his opponent's weakened king position, he kept missing the finishing blows. First it was a beautiful rook deflection, then a simple controlling tactic, then the transition into a winning pawn endgame, and finally a way to restrain his opponent's queen in the endgame...

Carlsen, Magnus ½-½ So, Wesley
The American player equalized without problems from the opening and never let Carlsen have even a hint of an advantage. Carlsen took his time before agreeing to the repetition, probably trying to find something better, but there was simply no rope to pull from.

A battle between titans was again rather quiet

Aronian, Levon ½-½ Giri, Anish
Both players blitzed out 23 moves of theory to arrive in a position in which Aronian had two extra pawns, but Giri's activity and the opposite colored bishops made it extremely hard for White to convert. After a transition into an endgame Aronian was forced to give back one of his pawns, which made the resulting endgame unwinnable.

Levon Aronian and Anish Giri was full of fireworks on the board...

ok, maybe not...

Caruana, Fabiano 1-0 Saric, Ivan
Fabulous Fabi starts 2-0!

Daniel King shows Caruana's win over Saric

Hou Yifan 0-1 Ding Liren
A strange game, as Hou Yifan seemed to lose a pawn out of the opening. Her compensation was at best good enough for equality, and maybe not quite that. Ding Liren's precision was felt as he slowly uncompressed from his restrained position, and slowly but surely his position improved. Hou Yifan entered a bad endgame that was cleanly won by her opponent.

Not the best start for Hou Yifan

Jobava, Baadur ½-½ Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime
After spending an hour and a half on the clock to reach a harmless position in the Accelerated Dragon, things were not looking so hot for Jobava. MVL decided that his position was not good enough to try to win and press his time advantage, but it would have been good to see him try. The end position was objectively equal, but not without any resources for both sides.

Radjabov, Teimour ½-½ Ivanchuk, Vassily
Radjabov's opening experiment seemed to yield him a sizeable advantage. He had some sort of good version of the Fianchetto King's Indian, but he was unable to capitalize on the advantage. Once Radjabov took en passant on e6 it seemed his advantage dissipated. If anything Ivanchuk started looking for a win somewhere, but it was not to be found.

Replay Masters Games

Masters standings after two rounds

Round two - Challengers

The Challengers section has some interesting highlights.

The first and and most visually pleasing was the demolition of Potkin by Wei Yi. A beautiful attack conducted by the Chinese young player annihilated his opponent's defenses and won him a nice game.

Robin Van Kampen and David Klein in their quick draw today

Gunina was able to take care of Saleh in a complex Benoni structure. Sevian had a promising position against Michiels, but instead of putting more pressure he finds himself in a disappointing 0-2 start.

Baadur Jobava giving Valentina Gunina some pre-game encouragement

The last decisive game of the day was of Navara cleanly outplaying Haast. Shankland can be happy about this, as he seems to have miraculously survived against the lowest rated player of the event.

One of the players got the memo about the picture being taken

As usual, Sagar Shah provides us with awesome commentary:

Replay Challengers Games

Challengers standings after two rounds

All pictures by Alina l'Ami from 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.