Field Norway Chess Completed

On Tuesday the field for the Norway Chess tournament in June was completed with Anish Giri of the Netherlands. He will play together with Magnus Carlsen, Levon Aronian, Alexander Grischuk, Fabiano Caruana, Vladimir Kramnik, Veselin Topalov, Sergey Karjakin, Peter Svidler and Simen Agdestein, who qualified by beating Jon Ludvig Hammer in a rapid match.

Norway Chess is this year sponsored by Unibet, an online gambling company located in Malta, even though the logo cannot be shown due to legal restrictions.

The second edition of the Norway Chess tournament will be the next super tournament, with many top 10 players playing. The dates are 2-13 June, 2014 and again the Stavanger region is hosting the event. 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.

The first players who confirmed their participation were Magnus Carlsen, Levon Aronian, Veselin Topalov, Fabiano Caruana, Sergey Karjakin and Peter Svidler. Mid-February Vladimir Kramnik also said “yes” to the organizers, and about four weeks later his compatriot Alexander Grischuk was added to the list.

Last year, besides Carlsen Norway's honors were defended by Jon Ludvig Hammer, but this time it will be Simen Agdestein. The 46-year-old grandmaster, who represented Norway as a footballer player two decades ago but is now mainly occupied with chess coaching, defeated Hammer in a rapid qualification match on April 27th.

The match, which took place during the Shamkir Chess tournament, was held in the TV2 studio and broadcast live on TV and online. Agdestein won with a score of 3.5-1.5, winning games three and four:

Yesterday, the final player was confirmed: Anish Giri of the Netherlands. Here's the full list of participants:

Norway Chess 2014 | Participants

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.

More information can be found at norwaychess.com.