Corus 2010 Preview
The 72nd edition of the traditional curtain-raiser to the new chess year gets underway in Wijk Aan Zee in the Netherlands on 16 January.
Longstanding sponsor Corus are continuing their support of this great annual event, allowing the organisers to assemble an impressive field in the 'A' Group.
Such is the status of the tournament, that even the 'B' Group is a powerful and attractive tournament in its own right, with the 'C' Group also worth keeping an eye on.
The 'A' Group is headed by World Champion Vishy Anand, former champion Vladimir Kramnik, and current world #1 Magnus Carlsen. Also in the mix is last year's winner Sergey Karjakin, the ever-popular and unpredictable Vassily Ivanchuk, and the still-improving Hikaru Nakamura.
Nigel Short and Fabiano Caruana are also playing, having been 'promoted' from the 'B' Group last year.
Speaking of the 'B' Group, Arkadij Naiditch is the top seed, but many eyes will be on the talented youngsters Wesley So, Anish Giri and Parimarjan Negi. Female participation comes in the form of Anna Muzychuk (pictured).
Anna's younger sister Mariya competes in the 'C' Group, where Li Chao is the top seed. However, the performance of 15 year-old GM Ray Robson will probably get most attention.
The full line-up in each group:
| A Group | NAT | Rating |
| Magnus Carlsen | NOR | 2810 |
| Viswanathan Anand | IND | 2790 |
| Vladimir Kramnik | RUS | 2788 |
| Vassily Ivanchuk | UKR | 2749 |
| Peter Leko | HUN | 2739 |
| Alexei Shirov | SPA | 2723 |
| Sergey Karjakin | RUS | 2720 |
| Leinier Dominguez | CUB | 2712 |
| Hikaru Nakamura | USA | 2708 |
| Nigel Short | ENG | 2696 |
| Fabiano Caruana | ITA | 2675 |
| Sergey Tiviakov | NED | 2662 |
| Jan Smeets | NED | 2657 |
| Loek van Wely | NED | 2641 |
| B Group | NAT | Rating |
| Arkadij Naiditsch | GER | 2687 |
| Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu | ROM | 2681 |
| Pentala Harikrishna | IND | 2672 |
| Hua Ni | CHN | 2657 |
| Emil Sutovsky | ISR | 2657 |
| Wesley So | PHI | 2656 |
| Tomi Nyback | FIN | 2643 |
| Varuzhan Akobian | USA | 2628 |
| Parimarjan Negi | IND | 2621 |
| Erwin l'Ami | NED | 2615 |
| David Howell | ENG | 2606 |
| Anish Giri | NED | 2588 |
| Dimitri Reinderman | NED | 2573 |
| Anna Muzychuk | SLO | 2523 |
| C Group | NAT | Rating |
| Li Chao-b | CHN | 2604 |
| Abhijeet Gupta | IND | 2577 |
| Ray Robson | USA | 2570 |
| Kjetil Lie | NOR | 2547 |
| Nils Grandelius | SWE | 2515 |
| Robin Swinkels | NED | 2495 |
| Daniele Vocaturo | ITA | 2495 |
| Robin van Kampen | NED | 2456 |
| Marya Muzychuk | UKR | 2447 |
| Zhaoqin Peng | NED | 2402 |
| Stefan Kuipers | NED | 2340 |
| Soumya Swaminathan | IND | 2323 |
| Benjamin Bok | NED | 2322 |
| Sjoerd Plukkel | NED | 2279 |
Each group will compete in a 13-game round-robin contest, starting 16 January and finishing 31 January. All games start at 1:30 pm local time (CET) except the final round which starts an hour earlier. There are rest days on 20/25/28 January.
The official site can be found here, with regular reports on the action at Chess.com!
