75. Tata Steel Chess Tournament

This event is taking place from January 12-27. The venue is as usual the traditional De Moriaan Center in the Dutch sea resort of Wijk aan Zee,. The tournament has taken place since 1938 and was known as the Corus Chess Tournament. The Indian company Tata Steel bought Corus (for US $7.6 billion) in 2006 and the chess event way renamed accordingly. The tournament has three Grandmaster Groups, which have 14 players and are held as full round robins (each competitor plays against every other). The rate of play for all three groups is 100 minutes for 40 moves, then 50 minutes for 20 moves and finally 15 minutes for the rest of the game, with a 30 seconds/move increment starting with the first move of the game.

Round one report

By GM Alejandro Ramirez

Every year the chess elite open up the season with one of the best, if not the best, tournament of the year: Wijk Aan Zee! Now under the sponsorship of Tata Steel, the tournament features three distinct sections that have always produced exciting encounter and surprising winners.

The playing hall, with the Open in its final phase in the foreground...

... and the A-C Groups in full swing in the background

This year’s group A holds a formidable amount of talented young players and of consolidated super-GMs. Participants include past winners Aronian, Nakamura, Anand, Carlsen and Karjakin. The lowest rated player is barely over 2600, but she is one of chess’ greatest hopes! With an aggressive style and a charming personality, ex World Champion Hou Yifan will have a lot to prove in the midst of so many chess monsters.

Todays’ round was relatively quiet, but did have some interesting aspects. The most looked after game, Maqgnus Carlsen vs Fabiano Caruana (above), finished in an uneventful draw after Carlsen’s opening experiment was neutralized and the position reached a dry opposite colored bishop situation.

The game between World Champion Viswanathan Anand (above) and US grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura also promised fireworks, but most of the interesting lines of this game remained as alternatives.

Nakamura (above) had a solid pawn structure that fully compensated his nonexistent development, and Anand saw nothing better than to force a perpetual at some point.

Levon Aronian (above left) had a dominant knight over Van Wely’s position, but it was completely neutralized by the Dutchman's rampaging rook. An exciting draw. Sokolov and Leko seemed to be putting the pressure on Wang Hao and L’Ami respectively, one with a promising position and the other with an extra pawn, but at the end both defenders held their draws.

The decisive results were quite instructive. Pentala Harikrishna (above) was infinitely patient and converted a slightly better rook endgame against Anish Giri after many many moves.

The highlight of the round however was Sergey Karjakin’s demolition of Hou Yifan. Her opening choice was poor to say the least, and after her king was stuck in the center it was only her wit that prevented her from losing immediately.

Alas, through clever tactics the Russian was able to win a piece for two pawns, and despite the fact that he only had one h-pawn left on the board, it was sufficient to force a win.

We hope the Chinese prodigy bounces back tomorrow, but Caissa seems to not have favored her as she starts this very tough tournament with two blacks in a row.

GM Danny King Play of the Day – Karjakin-Hou Yifan

Replay all the games of the round on our JavaScript player

Results of the B and C Groups

The great Jan Timman (above right) scored a black piece win over Sipke Ernst

The youngest participant, 14-year-old Alexandra Goryachkina, rated 2402, faced the top seed in her group, Argentian GM Fernando Peralta, 2617 on the Elo scale. On move 28 the U18 Women's World Champion had traded down to a a knight and bishop ending, a pawn down, and made her opponent fight until move 80 to get the full point.

Photos by Jeroen van den Belt

Commentary

There is full broadcast of all games on the official site and on the Playchess server, which will provide live audio commentary of the most interesting games (free for Premium members) starting at 15:00h for each round, 14:00h for the final round. Commentary begins at approx. 3 p.m. and lasts 2 to 2½ hours, with breaks in between. A round-up show is provided at 8 PM server time. Commentary is available, by the following experts:

Interviews with players after round one

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN: Group A – Group B – Group C 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.

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