Day 5

The Tata Steel Rapid & Blitz will be held over five days. Three days of rapid chess followed by two days with a blitz tournament. At the end the points are added together with Rapid wins counting double. The top four players by overall standings will play a final tournament in London in early December as part of the London Chess Classic.

Reports: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4

Live games and commentary

For the rapid games, players receive 25 minutes for all moves plus 10-second delay per move starting from move one.

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At the airport, in the hotel or at home on your couch: with the new ChessBase you always have access to the whole ChessBase world: the new ChessBase video library, tactics server, opening training App, the live database with eight million games, Let’s Check and web access to playchess.com

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Blitz standings

Final standings (Rapid)

Grand Chess Tour standings going into Kolkata

Schedule

Times in UTC.

Nov 22^nd: Rapid chess, rounds 1-3 8:30 UTC (9:30 CET / 3:30 EST).
Nov 23^rd: Rapid chess, rounds 4-6
Nov 24^th: Rapid chess, round 7-9

Nov 25^th: Blitz, rounds 1-9 (from 9.30 CET)
Nov 26^th: Blitz, rounds 9-18 (from 8.30 CET)

Chess fever in Kolkata

It was a busy day on the streets of Kolkata just like any other! The buses were filled to the brim, the sellers were selling their stuff, the people were trying to reach their home. It was already quite late in the evening.

That's how a busy evening in Kolkata looks like! | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

Just below the famous Gariahat flyover, a crowd had gathered. What was the reason? | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

Super GM Ding Liren was present there! | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

And so was blitz king Hikaru Nakamura! | Photo: Lennart Ootes/ Grand Chess Tour

But most importantly you could see the love for chess covered in the air! | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

A veteran takes on the 90+ year old Madhu Sudan Mukherjee, the oldest living chess player in the city.

The Gariahat Chess Club is situated under a fly over. It is the first chess club that is open 24x7 and all 365 days a year! It's an iconic destination in the city. Last year we had Wesley So visiting it and this year it was Nakamura and Ding Liren.

Most of the players arrived couple of days in advance and did some promotional activities. For e.g. Nakamura and Ding Liren visited the Gariahat Chess Club, Harikrishna and Anish Giri were invited to the Alekhine Chess Club, Wesley So went to the DDDBCA and Anand and Vidit were guests at the Tata Steel Office in Kolkata.

Harikrishna and Anish Giri surrounded by chess journalists, players, parents and coaches at the Alekhine Chess Club | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

The entire Q&A session was shot by ChessBase India's Shahid Ahmed | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

Opening package: 1.b3 and Black Secrets in the Modern Italian

Wesley So published two new opening DVDs: 1.b3, the so called Nimzo-Larsen-Attack, for White and his black secrets in the modern Italian. Get them in a package and save money!

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Wesley So visited the DDDBCA and gave away prizes for the Fischer Random tournament that was being held | Photo: Shahid Ahmed

Sourav Ganguly at the opening ceremony

The Taj Bengal Hotel in Kolkata is bumbling with energy. It's not just the ten world-class chess players staying in this iconic hotel. In fact, the entire Indian cricket team is hosted at the venue! And this means that the security has been amped up.

(From left to right): Tournament Director Jeroen van den Berg, Magnus Carlsen, Sourav Ganguly and IA Anantharam Rathinam | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

Sourav Ganguly is one of the most prominent personalities in India. He was one of India's finest cricket captains. As a batsman he scored over 11000 One Day International runs. He was a left-handed batsman and was so good on his off-side that he was nicknamed as the "God of Offside"! Being the current BCCI President and the India-Bangladesh test series coming up, this was busy day for Sourav. However, he was staying the same hotel and decided to spend a few minutes at the opening ceremony of the Tata Steel Chess India GCT.

When Sourav Ganguly played with Anand as his coach against Magnus Carlsen!

Sourav played 1.c4 as the inaugural move | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

1.c4 is what Anand recommended to Ganguly, and Sourav went into nostalgia mode,

I did exactly the same thing, move that pawn two squares, when my father bought me the first chessboard when I was ten-years-old.

Players after the drawing of lots | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

The amount of media interest was quite massive! | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

Chanakya Choudhary is the Group director of Tata Steel, the main sponsor of the event | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

AICF secretary Bharat Singh Chauhan, experienced arbiter Anantharam Rathinam and Chanakya Choudhary, group director of Tata Steel | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

All the players were given this memento to take home! | Photo: Lennart Ootes/ Grand Chess Tour

Improve your Tactics

The aim of this course is to help you understand how to make tactical opportunities arise as well as to sharpen your tactical vision - these selected lectures will help to foster your overall tactical understanding.

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After the opening ceremony ended, the players were interviewed by Tania Sachdev representing the Grand Chess Tour team | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

One video of Ding Liren and @GMHikaru playing a demonstration game between fans from Calcutta! @tschessindia . Thursday 1st round. pic.twitter.com/N2asJo8KoV

— Jeroen Van Den Berg (@Jvdbergchess) November 20, 2019

Jeroen van den Berg posted a few videos in his Twitter account. For the press conference with Anand and Vidit a few more journalists than usual in chess tournaments turned up.

This morning there was a Q&A with @vishy64theking and @viditchess for employees of TataSteel. It took place in the main office in Kolkata. @GrandChessTour @tschessindia pic.twitter.com/FcPA0cnuux

— Jeroen Van Den Berg (@Jvdbergchess) November 21, 2019

Anish Giri and Vidit then visited the local Alekhine chess club, where they were also met with a wave of enthusiasm.

Nice get together with @anishgiri and @HariChess at Alekhine Chess Club. Q and A with many children. @GrandChessTour @tschessindia pic.twitter.com/zVFkUPrjhr

— Jeroen Van Den Berg (@Jvdbergchess) November 20, 2019

Links

• Official site
• All stories on the Tata Steel Rapid and Blitz 2019