Master Class Vol.8: Magnus Carlsen
Scarcely any world champion has managed to captivate chess lovers to the extent Carlsen has. The enormously talented Norwegian hasn't been systematically trained within the structures of a major chess-playing nation such as Russia, the Ukraine or China.
The "Archive" on the tournament website offers some statistics about the tournament and its history. The first "Hoogovens Schaaktoernooi" was played in 1938 in Beverwijk, with four participants, and was won by Jiling Van Dijk and Philip Bakker who shared first with 2½ / 3.
From then on the tournament has been played every year, even during World War II. Over the years, almost the entire world elite has played in the tournament, but two players won more often than any of their rivals: Magnus Carlsen and Vishy Anand. They both have won five tournaments each and they are also both in line-up for 2018!
Magnus Carlsen at the Wijk tournament 2015 | Photo: Alina l'Ami
In 2007, Carlsen first played in Group A and finished at the bottom of the table — 13th place! But in the years to come he won five of the nine Wijk tournaments he played in, the first in his second attempt in 2008 when he shared first place with Levon Aronian. In the penultimate round Carlsen scored an important win against Vladimir Kramnik and afterwards Carlsen annotated this game. These comments can still be found in the ChessBase Mega Database.
The "Mega" is the database every serious chessplayer needs. The database contains 7.1 million games from 1500 to 2017, in highest quality standard, full of top level analyses and completely classified.
Anand had a better start than Carlsen. He achieved the first of his five victories in 1989, in his rookie year in the Masters tournament in Wijk. He then played no less than 17 times, although in 1994 he didn't play in the tournament but rather a candidate match against Arthur Jussupow which Anand won 4½ : 2½.
Vishy Anand | Photo: Alina l'Ami
But when Anand plays his first move of the first round in 2018 it will be exactly 29 years to a day that he played his first move ever in Wijk. On January 13, 1989, Anand achieved a fine and energetic victory against English grandmaster Anthony Miles:
Vishy Anand is one of the greatest chess talents of all times. On this DVD he speaks about his career, his views on chess, and presents the most beautiful and interesting games of his career.
All in all, Anand has played 208 games in Wijk and scored an impressive winning percentage of 62.26%. Carlsen played 130 games with a winning percentage of 61.54%. But in the overall ranking of the "highest win percentage" Anand is "only" on place 26. That is, of course, due to the fact that the winning percentage tends to fall the more games someone plays. In fact, the player with the highest percentage to win is Arnold Van den Hoek, who in 1943 won with 5½ / 7.
Percentage-wise he is thus ahead of Boris Spassky who won in 1967 with 11 / 15, and Lev Polugaevsky who in 1966 and again in 1979, scoring 19 points from 26 games in total. On place four of this ranking list follows Garry Kasparov with 28½ points from 39 games.
Compared to Carlsen and Anand, Kasparov has played relatively few games in Wijk but when he did play he was very efficient. He started in three tournaments and won them all: 1999, 2000 und 2001. And in his very first tournament, in 1999, Kasparov played one of the most brillant games in the history of chess, defeating Veselin Topalov in an amazing game.
Master Class Vol.7: Garry Kasparov
On this DVD a team of experts gets to the bottom of Kasparov's play. In over 8 hours of video running time the authors Rogozenko, Marin, Reeh and Müller cast light on four important aspects of Kasparov's play: opening, strategy, tactics and endgame.
Fighting against the King's Indian
In 60 minutes you can get an idea how to play versus the Kings Indian like an expert like GM Loek van Wely, known for his epic battles in the Kingsindian with Teimour Radjabov.
However, the highest winning percentage of the players who played more than a hundred games in Wijk, was scored by Lajos Portisch. The Hungarian won the tournament no less than four times (1965, 1972, 1975 and 1978), scoring 84 points from 127 — that's a winning percentage of 66.67%!
Two Dutch players played the most games in total in the history of the tournament: Jan Hein Donner and Loek Van Wely. Donner played in 24 tournaments, won two of them, and played no less than 298 games in these tournaments. Van Wely played in 25 tournaments — in one more than Donner — but still played the same number of games as his Dutch compatriot. But unlike Donner, Van Wely never won in Wijk aan Zee. His best achievement was a fourth place in 2003.
These records of Donner and Van Wely will still be intact after the 2018 tournament. But Anand and Carlsen both have the chance to win their sixth tournament in Wijk aan Zee. The days to come will show whether they will write chess history again.
Complete Masters and Challengers groups
| Name | FED | Elo | World rank |
| Magnus Carlsen | Norway | 2834 | 1 |
| Fabiano Caruana | USA | 2811 | 2 |
| Shakhriyar Mamedyarov | Azerbaijan | 2804 | 3 |
| Wesley So | USA | 2792 | 6 |
| Vladimir Kramnik | Russia | 2787 | 7 |
| Peter Svidler | Russia | 2768 | 10 |
| Viswanathan Anand | India | 2767 | 11 |
| Sergey Karjakin | Russia | 2753 | 14 |
| Anish Giri | Netherlands | 2752 | 15 |
| Wei Yi | China | 2743 | 22 |
| Maxim Matlakov | Russia | 2718 | 32 |
| Hou Yifan | China | 2680 | 64 |
| Adhiban Baskaran | India | 2655 | 96 |
| Gawain Jones | England | 2640 | 127 |
| Name | FED | Elo | Born |
| Vidit Gujrathi | India | 2718 | 1994 |
| Bassem Amin | Egypt | 2693 | 1988 |
| Michal Krasenkow | Poland | 2671 | 1963 |
| Anton Korobov | Ukraine | 2652 | 1985 |
| Matthias Blübaum | Germany | 2640 | 1997 |
| Erwin l´Ami | Netherlands | 2634 | 1985 |
| Jeffery Xiong | USA | 2634 | 2000 |
| Jorden van Foreest | Netherlands | 2629 | 1999 |
| Dmitry Gordievsky | Russia | 2622 | 1996 |
| Benjamin Bok | Netherlands | 2607 | 1995 |
| Aryan Tari | Norway | 2599 | 1999 |
| Harika Dronavalli | India | 2497 | 1991 |
| Olga Girya | Russia | 2489 | 1991 |
| Lucas van Foreest | Netherlands | 2481 | 2001 |
Ratings as of January 1, 2018 | Source: FIDE
We'll be re-capping each day's action with a live webcast at 21:00 CET (3pm EST) from a variety of familiar ChessBase contributors:
| 13. Jan | Round 1 | Yannick Pelletier |
| 14. Jan | Round 2 | Daniel King |
| 15. Jan | Round 3 | Simon Williams |
| 16. Jan | Round 4 | Daniel King |
| 17. Jan | Round 5 | Simon Williams |
| 18. Jan | Rest day | |
| 19. Jan | Round 6 | Simon Williams |
| 20. Jan | Round 7 | Daniel King |
| 21. Jan | Round 8 | Yannick Pelletier |
| 22. Jan | Rest day 2 | |
| 23. Jan | Round 9 | Lawrence Trent |
| 24. Jan | Round 10 | Yannick Pelletier |
| 25. Jan | Rest day 3 | |
| 26. Jan | Round 11 | Daniel King |
| 27. Jan | Round 12 | Lawrence Trent |
| 28. Jan | Round 13 | Daniel King |
GM Daniel King has already recorded a preview of the tournament for ChessBase Videos:
You'll find all round-up shows in a special section
All the broadcasts on Playchess.com at a glance (guide)
