Wijk on the free day: Group C tournament

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 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.

Standings after ten rounds in the C Group

In the following you will find the names of the players, their country, rating, points and their performance in the first ten rounds. In brackets are the number of rating points they have gained or lost in this event.

1st: GM Sabino Brunello, ITA, rated 2572, 8.5/10 points, performance 2776 (+22)

3rd: GM Robin Swinkels, NED, 2508, 6.5/10, performance 2594 (+12)

5th: GM Alexander Kovchan, UKR, 2579, 5.5/10, performance 2497 (–10)

6th: IM Igor Bitensky, ISR, 2400, 5.0/10, performance 2480 (+11)

7th: GM Krikor Mekhitarian, BRA, 2543, 5.0/10, performance 2475 (–9)

9th: IM Twan Burg, NED, 2492, 4.5/10, performance 2456 (–5)

11th: GM Oleg Romanishin, UKR, 2521, 4.0/10, performance 2407 (–16)

Oleg Mikhailovich Romanishin, 61, is a famous Ukrainian GM who at his prime was a world-class player with a trademark aggressive style, which he attributes to his training as a junior. One of his trainers was Mikhail Tal. Romanishin also has a reputation for the use of rare, offbeat and sometimes long since discarded systems. Only by means of deep research and accurate preparation has he been able to employ these openings as weapons to sidestep known theory and fight for the full point.

12th: WGM Alexandra Goryachkina, RUS, 2402, 3.0/10, performance 2315 (–12)

Alexandra is just 14, but has an IM title and a 2402 rating. She earned her WGM title at the very strong European Women's Championship in March last year as the second youngest in history (after Hou Yifan at 12 years and 3 months). This event has not been her best, but she is definitely a player to watch in the future.

13th: IM Mark van der Werf, NED, 2450, 2.5/10, performance 2307 (–18)

14th: WIM Lisa Schut, NED, 2295, 2.0/10, performance 2250 (–6)

Lisa is 18 and last year's silver medalist at the World Girls U18 Championship, behind Alexandra Goryachkina, left in the above picture (with Garry Kasparov, Bronze medallist Maria Severina and trainer Adrian Mikhalchishin).

Here's Lisa in an interview during last year's Tata Steel tournament. You will notice her very simple,
fractured English – no, wait a minute, it is flawless and eloquent. This girl has spent time in the USA...

A few tactical moments from Group C

Here are some entertaining tactical highlights from the games rounds 5–10 of the C group (we brought you tactical moments from the earlier rounds here). Click on the diagram in the notation to jump to the critical position. Note that you can download the PGN file our Javascript player is showing and load it with Fritz (or Rybka, or Houdini) and analyse the positions marked as diagrams.

All photos by Frans Peeters, who is an English teacher at a large comprehensive school in Goes, Zeeland. Since 1998 he has been teaching of computer science, runs a website for teachers of ICT in The Netherlands, and incidentally translated the manuals for Playchess and ChessBase 11 into Dutch. Frans is a hobby photographer who uses an advance Nikon D4 system.

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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