Zurich 02: Nakamura with the leaders

The «Zurich Chess Challenge 2014» will be the first encounter between the newly crowned World Champion, Norway’s Magnus Carlsen, and the former title holder, India’s Viswanathan Anand after their recent match in Chennai. From Wednesday, 29 January to Tuesday, 4 February 2014, they will compete in the 3rd Zurich Chess Challenge along with four other great chess stars: Levon Aronian (Armenia), Hikaru Nakamura (USA), Fabiano Caruana (Italy) and Boris Gelfand (Israel).

Friendly Match Skvortsov - Hou Yifan

As part of the pleasantries in Zurich the reigning World Women's Champion played a friendly game against the sponsor of the event, Oleg Skvortsov.

Oleg Skvortsov received a traditional gift from China

Yifan in turn received her own gift...

A beautiful Hermes scarf she could hardly let go of. In the middle is Natalia Skvortsova,
the driving force between Zurich 2014!

The game was very sharp and Oleg could have gained a nice initiative sacrificing the queen... He lost but the World Champion said she was not sure about her position after the possible sacrifice.

Round Two

Absolutely the most anticipated match of the tournament proved to be very interesting

Carlsen was unable to really pressure Aronian

Daniel King shows the game Carlsen - Aronian and Anand - Nakamura

Nakamura wasted no time in putting pressure on Anand. He allowed his queenside to be weakened but he counterattacked swiftly on the kingside. Anand didn't respond in an accurate way and the American stormed his position:

With this result Nakamura catches both Aronian and Carlsen at the top with 1.5/2.0 while Anand has not scored a half point yet. Remember that this actually means that Aronian, Carlsen and Nakamura are at 3.0/4 since the rapid games count for "half" on the total standings.

Someone was spotted practicing her photography skills

The post-mortem is lively and interesting and the players have not been
shy to point out what they have missed during the game. Here Pelletier interviewing Aronian

Oleg Skvortsov discussing the games with GMs Ljubomir Ljubojević and Genna Sosonko in the press room

Carlsen is still in the lead, but tomorrow he will play his first Black game, will this make a difference?

Caruana and Gelfand had an interesting game. Unusual to his style, Caruana chose a Dutch defense which is a little more aggressive than what he usually practices with the Black side. It seems as if he managed to comfortably go into an endgame that was equal and then to a rook and knight endgame where only Black could be better thanks to his piece activity; Caruana even declined a draw at some point.

However his transition to a knight endgame was awful and he was in serious problems at some point. He found a nice resource with 46...h4! and he managed to hold on to his half point.

Being a celebrity is tough

Replay round two games

Select games from the dropdown menu above the board

Cristian Chirila - Guest Commentator Former World u-16 Champion and currently a grandmaster finishing his studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, Cristian is an ambitious chess player. Find out more about Cristian, including his chess lesson services, biography and games here.

Maria Emelianova - Photographer Maria Emelianova is 26 years old, born in Ekaterinburg, Russia, Women FIDE Master, with a 2113 Elo rating. After finishing school Maria moved to Moscow to study at the university, so chess was forgotten for some time. She worked for about a year with Alexander Roshal in the chess magazine "64". Her carrier as a chess photographer started at the Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk. "It was just a hobby, but somehow became an interesting job," says Maria, who works with a Canon 1DX. "Now I am finishing my studies at two universities in Moscow, and am looking forward to a future in the big world of chess."

Schedule and Pairings

The event is a six player round robin, with a rate of play of 40 moves in 120 minutes, then 20 moves in 60 minutes and the rest of game in 15 minutes, with an increment of 30 seconds per move starting after move 61. Special rule: in case of a draw before move 40, an additional rapid game will be played (which does not count for the overall result).

• The blitz will be used to determine the colors
• The classical time control gives two points to wins, one for draws and none for losses
• The rapid time control gives one point to wins, half to draws and none for losses

The winner will be the one who scores the most points between the classical tournament and the rapid.

Schedule of Commentary

Schedule and results

Rapid Schedule

Links Official tournament site All 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.