Tata 08: A special guest

The 76th edition of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament takes place from 10 to 26 January 2014. The top players will compete in two groups (previously there were three), with twelve players in each, instead of fourteen. The structure of the amateur tournaments remains unchanged. Both groups start on January 11th 2014, with all rounds starting at 13:30h (1:30 p.m.) local time, except for the last round on January 26th, which begins at 12:00h. Two rounds will be played in Amsterdam and Eindhoven and will start at 14:00. The time controls are 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.

Special Guest

Today the tournament had a special appearance by one of the most famous artists from the Netherlands. Nick Schilder, from the duo Nick and Simon, was the guest of honor today. The duo has won many awards and has released many double platinum albums. They were the most booked artists in the Netherlands in 2007.

Chess fans turned to be music fans for the day as well!

Even our photographer couldn't help feeling admiration and played Nick in a game of blitz

The young people crowd around the star

The traditional gong to start the round

Round eight - Masters

Giri had an interesting idea in the Catalan but it was not sufficient

Giri, Anish ½-½ Aronian, Levon
Giri's interesting handling of the Catalan gave him an extra pawn, but unfortunately it did not come with realistic winning chances as Aronian's active rook in the endgame gave him sufficient counterplay to hold the half point.

Aronian is still leading, but it's only by half a point

We reported previously that Giri and Caruana shared Chuchelov as a coach. We have been corrected and Giri recently said in an interview that he is now working with Tukmakov instead.

Harikrishna, Pentala 1-0 Nakamura, Hikaru

Daniel King shows his highlights of the day including Harikrishna vs Nakamura

Nakamura is losing a fair amount of rating in Wijk Aan Zee, but surely he will
bounce back in the upcoming events. He will play in Zurich later this month.

Caruana, Fabiano 1-0 Rapport, Richard
It's hard to expect Rapport to play a normal variation nowadays, but this line of the French is beyond questionable. Caruana's version of it was quite enterprising and the game turned murky and wild from the beginning, White's development advantage being offset by pawn that kept taking pieces until it reached g2 (!). However once this pawn perished it was clear that White's pair of bishops and superior structure was sufficient to give him a clear edge which the Italian converted without problems with a swift mating attack.

Dominguez Perez, Leinier 1-0 So, Wesley
George Margvelashvili annotates:

George Margvelashvili George is an active grandmaster representing Georgia. He was born in 1990 and completed his title in 2010. He is currently a student at the University of Texas at Dallas finishing his Master's degree in Finance.

So was on the receiving end of a violent attack

Van Wely, Loek 1-0 Naiditsch, Arakdij
Naiditsch successfully equalized out of the opening using a Bogo-Indian, and he even managed to win an exchange soon afterwards. However horribly passive play from then on allowed the Dutch player to build a serious initiative on the kingside while the German's pieces were doing absolutely nothing. Van Wely missed a couple of killing blows but that was ok since Naiditsch kept giving him opportunities, until at last Van Wely found one of the winning sequences and finished the game off.

Naiditsch seemed to have everything under control,
but something happened and he lost the thread of the game

Karjakin, Sergey 1-0 Gelfand, Boris
White's positional opening gave him a pleasant major piece endgame. Gelfand shed a pawn to shatter his opponent's structure and for some counterplay, and it seems like this was the correct decision. However the Israeli transposed into a rook endgame at the worst possible time and it ended up being hopelessly lost as White's passed b-pawn was too powerful. Had he simplified earlier (32...Qxg3!?) he might have been able to hold.

Gelfand will also try to recover lost ground in Zurich

Replay Master games

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Standings after eight rounds

Round nine - Challengers

The new leader

Saric has emerged as the new leader in the Challenger's group after his important victory against Wojtaszek. The game was a positional Najdorf in which the opening of the queenside proved fatal for Black, whose sever underdevelopment did not allow him to defend that side of the board. The other important result was of course Jobava's loss to Brunello. Jobava had an extra pawn but had to deal with a nuisance as his opponent reached a pawn all the way to c7. To top things off his king didn't feel particularly safe. He kept moving back and forth until he made a critical mistake that was exploited by the Italian.

Brunello was Jobava's executioner this round

Jan Timman is only one point away from Saric

Timman joined Muzychuk in a tie for third as he beat Duda in an endgame in which he was up a pawn. Anna Muzychuk could only manage a draw against Zhao Xue in a tense game that finished in a perpetual.

The battle between the ladies (Zhao Xue vs Muzychuk) was a crazy draw

Troff seemed to have the better position against Reinderman but he underestimated how weak his c4 pawn became. With this pawn plucked the b3-pawn became a weakness and it fell soon afterwards.

Jobava has four rounds to overtake Saric.
Saric has yet to play Muzychuk, but Jobava has not played Timman

Yu Yangyi was first winning, then completely drawn, then Van Delft blunder horribly and the Chinese player won a full point. Lastly Bok and Goudriaan played a very long drawn endgame.

Surely this is called 'trespassing'

Replay Challenger's games

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Standings after nine rounds

Photos by Alina l'Ami

Schedule and results

Grandmaster Group B

Commentary schedule on Playchess

Links Official tournament site All Master Section games All Challenger section games 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.