Wijk aan Zee turns 80 — and other stats

From Hoogovens to Tata

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.

Mega Database 2018

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:

My Career Vol. 2

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

Daily live round-up shows

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)

Links

• Official site
• On the bucket list: Wijk aan Zee
• Tata Steel Chess 2018 field complete
• All-time statistics