Tata Steel 2013 Round 1

The 2013 Tata Steel Chess is taking place from 12-27 January in Wijk Aan Zee in the Netherlands.

This famous annual tournament has three separate single round-robin competitions, the A, B, and C Groups, each featuring 14 players.

The strongest tournament is the A Group and this year features 6 out of the top 10 ranked players; world champion Vishy Anand, world #1 Magnus Carlsen, defending champion Lev Aronian, rising star Fabiano Caruana, world #6 Sergey Karjakin, and US champion Hikaru Nakamura.

Chess.com has live coverage and commentary of a selection of rounds.  See here for the latest details (scroll down the page).

Chess.com coverage starts at 05:30 Pacific, 08:30 Eastern in the US (13:30 UTC).

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Round 1 - Official website report

The 75th edition of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament took off to a slow start with the vast majority of grandmaster games ending in a draw. First exception was Sergey Karjakin of Russia who celebrated his 23rd birthday with a clean victory over 19-year-old Hou Yifan, the Chinese former Women's World Champion who makes her debut at the highest level in Wijk aan Zee. With 11.c4! Karjakin put his finger on the sore spot of Hou Yifan's off-beat French.

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The only other player making his debut in the A Group fared much better. Last year's winner of Group B, Pentala Harikrishna of India, punished Holland's number one Anish Giri for sloppy play in a rook endgame that still contained “a few tricks”, to quote Harikrishna.

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All the remaining games in Group A ended in a draw, although Peter Leko of Hungary came very close to victory when Dutch Erwin l'Ami inexplicably sacrificed a pawn with 15...Bf6. Leko missed several promising ways to consolidate his material advantage, but eventually allowed l'Ami to escape into a drawn rook-and-knight endgame.

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Also exciting was the battle in a sharp King's Indian Defence between last year's winner Levon Aronian and Wijk aan Zee Dinosaur Loek van Wely that soon left theoretically well-throdden paths. Van Wely picked up the gauntlet grabbing a b-pawn left undefended and then offering his queen for a rook and a minor piece a few moves later. This could have led to an unclear position, but Aronian refused to take the 'bait' with 17.Qc2 cxd5 18.Nb6 Ra6 19.Rad1 and instead went for a more positional approach with 17.Nb6 Ra6 18.Rb1. The pressure was on, but the Dutchman's stubborn defence kept the door shut.

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Despite a very sharp line of the French Defence, the split point between World Champion Viswanathan Anand and American Champion Hikaru Nakamura was much less exciting, as after just a few original moves game ended quickly.

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World Number One Magnus Carlsen on the other hand left mainline theory in no time and tried to squeeze water from a rock against Italy's Fabiano Caruana. After a slight inaccuracy by the star from Norway on move 28 a draw became inevitable.

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Finally, Holland's Ivan Sokolov had a slightly better game throughout with White against China's Wang Hao, but the student in advertising at Beijng University held his own.

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In Grandmaster Group B the Dutch T's Jan Timman and Sergey Tiviakov were the only victors with wins over Sipke Ernst, recent winner of the Groningen Open, and World Junior Champion Alexander Ipatov respectively.

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B Group Round 1 Results

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Three of the four top seeds, Fernando Peralta, Sabino Brunello and Krikor Mekhitarian, took an early lead in Group C.

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C Group Round 1 Results

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Photos from the official website coverage. Videos by Freshmen media. Games and tables via TWIC.