Corus 2010 starts in four days

In just four days from now, one of the most important international chess festivals, and certainly that of The Netherlands, takes off: the Corus Chess Tournament. By now traditionally, ChessVibes will be there to cover the event with lots of videos, including the press conferences.

With Magnus Carlsen, Viswanathan Anand and Vladimir Kramnik, the A group will be stronger than last year. Anand won the tournament already five times, and this year his opponent in the 2008 World Championship match, Vladimir Kramnik, will be among his main rivals. The two will obviously encounter strong competition from Magnus Carlsen. The Norwegian, who started working with Garry Kasparov last year, has become the youngest player ever to reach the number one spot on the FIDE rating list.

Peter Leko and Vassily Ivanchuk are two more familiar names in Wijk aan Zee but reigning U.S. Champion Hikaru Nakamura makes his debut in the top group. The American played in Corus B in 2004 and this year he'll be a force to reckon with on the highest stage, as he's currently showing great form at the World Team Championship in Turkey. Fabiano Caruana, who promoted from Grandmaster group B last year, played a solid tournament in Reggio Emilia recently.

Former World Championship contender Nigel Short missed promotion last year in a nail-biting last-round game against Caruana, in which the Englishman threw away a winning position and even lost. However, Short can look back at an excellent year in which he brought his rating over 2700 again, and so the Corus organizers invited him to the A group anyway.

Of course we'll see the glorious winner of 2009, Sergey Karjakin, back in Wijk aan Zee (now under the Russian flag) and this counts for Cuba's number one Leinier Dominguez as well, who also did very well this year. Besides another public favourite, Alexei Shirov, three Dutch players complete the field: Jan Smeets, Sergey Tiviakov and Loek van Wely.

In the B group Arkadij Naiditsch, Emil Sutovsky, Ni Hua, Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu and Pentala Harikrishna are the biggest favourites. Rising star Wesley So promoted from the C group and former world's youngest grandmaster Anish Giri plays as well.

Due to the financial crisis the continuation of Grandmaster Group C was in doubt for a while, but in September it was given the green light by main sponsor Corus. As always, the winner will promote to Grandmaster Group B next year.

The youngest participant this year is Dutch FM Benjamin Bok (14); the oldest is 11-times Dutch Women Champion GM Zhaoqin Peng (41). Reigning Dutch champion under 20 IM Robin van Kampen (15) was also invited, as well as Soumya Swaminathan from India, who won the 2009 World Junior Championship for girls (U-20) in Argentina.

Both Muzychuk sisters are coming to Wijk aan Ze this year. The strongest, Anna, who represents the chess federation of Slovenia, is participant of Grandmaster Group B. Maryia, who still has ‘UKR’ behind her name, plays in group C.

The 72nd Corus Chess Tournament takes places Jarnuary 16-31 2010 in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands. Below we give the participants of Grandmaster Groups A, B and C, followed by our videos of last year. This year the tournament website will be providing many videos, all produced by ChessVibes, and at this site you can watch the very popular press concerence videos. We're looking forward to another exciting Corus!

Corus Chess Tournament 2010 | Participants Grandmaster Group A

Corus Chess Tournament 2010 | Participants Grandmaster Group B

Corus Chess Tournament 2010 | Participants Grandmaster Group C

Corus Chess Tournament 2009: Corus Chess News


Corus Chess Tournament 2009: Press Conferences