Super Chess in Stavanger begins Tomorrow

The No Logo Norway Chess Tournament will take place in Stavanger, Norway from June 2nd to June 13th. The tournament features some of the best players in the world and has a massive rating average of 2774.

Even stronger than last year, the Norway Super-Tournament has a very interesting field this year. The festivities will begin with a blitz tournament tomorrow which will decide the pairing order.

Players

The World Champion Magnus Carlsen heads the field of the tournament. Clearly the tournament favorite, he will be under pressure to perform in Norway. He was unable to win last year and with the Olympiad coming up Magnus Carlsen has to show he can at least take this super-tournament in his home turf.

Levon Aronian is still firmly second in the World Rankings, however he has to show that he has regained his shape after a dismal performance in the Candidates tournament.

Alexander Grischuk has recently been on fire. Out of nowhere he became third in the World Rankings in the recently released June rating list after going 6.0/7 in the Russian League and winning 15 rating points. Will Grischuk be able to perform as well in a closed tournament? This can be his time to shine.

Despite his young age, Fabiano Caruana is one of the most consistent performers in top level chess. He has a very precise repertoire with Black that is difficult to crack, and any attempts to deviate from theory have rarely been successful. After a good showing in Shamkir, Caruana will surely be looking to take the title.

Vladimir Kramnik has not played much in the last year. After his victory in the World Cup in Tromso last year Kramnik has only played in three tournaments, all of which were rather mediocre for him, especially the Candidates tournament where significant blunders prevented him from obtaining a better place. We will have to see if he has regained his form from Tromso.

Like Aronian and Kramnik, Veselin Topalov cannot be happy with his showing in the Candidates. He will seek revenge here in Stavanger, his first tournament since then. His aggressive style is very hit or miss, and he will either overpower his opponents brilliantly or fall flat on his face.

Sergey Karjakin is the defending champion of the Norway super-tournament. Still very young and recently re-married, Karjakin is known to be a very solid player. He had a great showing in the Candidates where he took second place and a good showing in Tata Steel prior to that, so he is certainly a player that is in shape and can go for first place.

Peter Svidler does not come into the tournament as a favorite, but his style is perfect to surprise people and enough of those surprises might catapult him to the top of the leaderboard.

Giri's last performance in a super-tournament was a fantastic tie for second in Tata Steel. He switched trainers not too long ago and it will be interesting to see what kind of impact this will have over the board.

Simen Agdestein is better known for being Carlsen's coach when he was younger and as a seven time Norwegian champion, but he will definitely be against tough competition in the field. If you are a betting man, Unibet (which is sponsoring the event) has him on 1:150 odds of winning the tournament.

Stavanger

Here are the locations of the individual parts of the event. By using a variety of historical locations the organisers wish to get maximum attention for the Stavanger region.

Click to explore on Google Maps

Stavanger is famous for being the oil capital of Norway, but it is also a very beautiful city. The official website has provided us with some amazing sights.

The Pulpit Rock is a famous touristic attraction only 25 km from Stavanger

The cliff is called Preikestolen or Prekestolen in Norwegian, and is a massive cliff 604 metres (1,982 feet) above Lysefjorden. The top of the cliff is approximately 25 by 25 metres (82 by 82 feet), almost flat, and is visited by up to 200,000 people who have to take a 3.8 km (2.4 mi.) hike to reach the top. Preikestolenis one of the most visited natural tourist attractions in Norway.

Stavanger also boasts of having many kilometers of open beach

A rural and picturesque city

Seafood industry is alive and well in this city!

And a beautiful view at night

Schedule of Events

The first part of the tournament will be deciding the pairing order, and this will be done with a blitz tournament tomorrow that you can watch live on the official website of on playchess.com

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games are being 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.