Star-studded Norway Chess Starts Today

Today the second edition of the Norway Chess tournament takes off in Stavanger, Norway. Magnus Carlsen, Levon Aronian, Alexander Grischuk, Fabiano Caruana, Vladimir Kramnik, Veselin Topalov, Sergey Karjakin, Peter Svidler, Anish Giri and Simen Agdestein will play the tournament which, like last year, starts with a blitz tournament to determine the pairing numbers.

The second edition of the Norway Chess tournament (officially “No Logo Norway Chess” - see below) will be held 2-13 June, 2014 in the Stavanger region in Norway. Since the promotion of the region is one of the main ideas behind the tournament, again the players will be moving the pieces in different locations, but not as many as last year. Here's the schedule:

Norway Chess 2014 | Schedule

The main hotel, where most of the games will be played, has been moved to a place between Sandnes and Stavanger: the Hotel Scandic Stavanger Forus. The blitz event will be held on the beautiful Flor & Fjære island, there will be a school tournament in the Vitenfabrikken in Sandnes, the 4th round of the main tournament will be at Vågen VGS and the 6th round at the Aarbakke factory.

More about the venues can be read here. Below is a map:

In November 2013 the second Norway Chess tournament was already confirmed. The main sponsors are Scandic, Stavanger Aftenblad, Altibox, Lyse, Aarbakke og Jadarhus. The five last of these were also sponsors for Norway Chess 2013.

Here's the full list of participants:

Norway Chess 2014 | Participants

Unibet

Norway Chess is this year sponsored by Unibet, an online gambling company located in Malta. At first the logo could be shown due to legal restrictions, and so the organizers dubbed the tournament “No Logo Norway Chess” and added “no logo” to their logo. It was both a simple and brilliant way to deal with the situation, but meanwhile the Unibet logo has appeared on the tournament website anyway.

And there is also an article on the odds given by Unibet: apparently Carlsen's odds to win the tournament outright are set at 1,75. 

Blitz

Like last year, the event starts with a blitz tournament to deternime the pairing numbers. This will be held today, Monday June 2nd, from 17:00 CET onwards. The location is the beautiful Flor & Fjære island.

The pairings for this blitz tournament have been made already - you can find them here.

Alongside the main tournament there will be an open tournament, held 6-9 June at «2020park», a real estate business park at Forus, in short walking distance from the Scandic Forus Hotel. It's a 6-round Swiss in three rating groups.

Chess.com/TV

The Norway Chess tournament will be covered daily on Chess.com/TV! Here's our schedule:

Blitz: Monday, June 2nd — IM Danny Rensch, FM Mike Klein & Peter Doggers
Round 1: Tuesday, June 3rd — IM Thomas Rendle and GM Danny Gormally
Round 2: Wednesday, June 4th — GM Irina Krush and GM Melik Khachiyan
Round 3: Thursday, June 5th — GM Alex Yermolinsky and GM Ben Finegold
Round 4: Saturday, June 7th — GM Dejan Bojkov and Jason Stoneking
Round 5: Sunday, June 8th — Joshua Sampson and GM Ben Finegold
Round 6: Monday, June 9th — GM Dejan Bojkov and GM Ben Finegold
Round 7: Tuesday, June 10th — IM Danny Rensch and GM Melik Khachiyan
Round 8: Thursday, June 12th — GM Alex Yermolinsky and GM Alexander Shabalov
Round 9: Friday, June 13th — GM Simon Williams and IM Thomas Rendle