Tata Steel Chess Super-GM starts on Saturday

Information and schedule

This event starts with an opening ceremony on Friday January 14th. The first round is played on Saturday 15th, the last on January 30th, 2011. The venue is as usual the traditional De Moriaan Center in 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 this year the chess event has been renamed.

Wijk aan Zee (pronounced vyke ahn zeh – to rhyme with "bike on day") is a small wind-swept town on the coast of the North Sea in the municipality of Beverwijk in the province of North Holland of the Netherlands.

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The tournament takes place in three Grandmaster Groups, with a number of amateur events being held at the same time. The three Grandmaster tournaments have 14 players each and are round robins (each competitor plays against every other).

Participants of Grandmaster Group A

The average rating in Group A is almost 21 points higher that in the previous year, and the category has climbed from 19 to 20. The world's top four players are present: world number one Magnus Carlsen (who is last year's winner), World Champion Viswanathan Anand, Armenian GM Levon Aronian and Anand's predecessor Vladimir Kramnik. The next two on the FIDE list are missing (Karjakin and Topalov), but the list continues with number seven Alexander Grischuk. Anish Giri debuts after getting a place in this group by winning the 2010 B tournament.

Participants of Grandmaster Group B

This group is also stronger than last year, the average rating climbing by thirty points. All players are full GMs. Top seed Radek Wojtaszek is Anand's second in his World Championship matches, as is Surya Ganguly from India.

Participants of Grandmaster Group C

Last year this group had an average rating of 2455, which this year has climbed to over 2500, making the C Group a category 11. There are two female players – making two out of 42 participants in all three groups: Kateryna Lahno from Ukraine and Tania Sachdev from India.

Rate of play
For all three groups the rate of play 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.

Location: The tournament takes place in the De Moriaan Community Centre (Dorpsduinen 4, 1949 EG Wijk aan Zee). There is running commentary on the games of the Grandmaster Groups in a special Chess Pavilion, on the Village Green in Wijk aan Zee (one minute walk from De Moriaan).

Schedule (playing days)

Games begin at 13:30h local time (CET), except for the last round on January 30th, which begins at 12:30h. There are three rest days, on January 19th, 24th, and 27th.

Commentary

There will be full broadcast of all games on the official site and on the Playchess server. Playchess 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. Here's the schedule:

Schedule of Grandmaster Group A

Schedule of Grandmaster Group B

Schedule of Grandmaster Group C

Links

• Official web site
• Where is Wijk aan Zee
• ChessBase: Wijk 2010 (winner: Magnus Carlsen)
• ChessBase: Wijk 2009 (winner: Sergey Karjakin)
• ChessBase: Wijk 2008 (winners: Aronian, Carlsen)
• ChessBase: Wijk 2007 (winners: Aronian, Topalov, Radjabov)
• ChessBase: Wijk 2006 (winners: Anand, Topalov)
• ChessBase: Wijk 2005 (winner: Peter Leko)
• ChessBase: Wijk 2004 (winner: Viswanathan Anand)