World champion Viswanathan Anand is back at Wijk aan Zee to participate in the Corus Chess Tournament. Anand, the five-time record holder of this event is ahead of Max Euwe (Dutch World Champion), Viktor Korchnoi and Lajos Portisch all of whom won it four times. Anand will be looking for his sixth title.
The field has a strong category 19 line up with many young rising players who are probably worth more than their rating. World No.1 Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik, Vassily Ivanchuk are among the 14 players for an all-play-all. The event starts January 16 and runs until Jan 31 with a full three free days.
Besides the honour of having won this tournament the most number of times, Anand also has other good memories of Wijk aan Zee which includes in defeating Artur Yusupov in the World Championship Candidates match in 1994. Anand takes on Sergey Karjakin in the opener with the black pieces. The pairing has been good to Anand. He gets white against archrival Kramnik and also youngsters Carlsen and Nakamura.
Two Indians, Pentala Harikrishna and Parimarjan Negi are in the Grand Master Group B which has a category 16 field. Germany's Arkady Naiditch is the top seed and Nisipeanu of Romania is the second seed ahead of Harikrishna the third seed. Harikrishna takes on 1994-born Anish Giri, in the opening round. Anish Giri is an emerging Dutch grandmaster with a rating of 2588.
India has two more players but in the Grand Master group C. World Junior champion of 2008 Abhijeet Gupta and World Junior girls champion of 2009 Soumya Swaminathan find a place in this category 9 grandmaster tournament. Soumya takes on 16-year old Dutch boy Robson in the opening round.
|