2014 Tata Steel Chess (Wijk aan Zee)

This year’s Tata Steel Chess Tournament features a scales down edition from previous years with only two sections and 12 players. Previous tournaments have had three sections of 14 players each. In addition, neither Magnus Carlsen, nor Viswanathan Anand will be present. Both have long-running histories of the tournament, but are not participating.

Who is participating? Levon Aronian leads the field in the “Masters” followed by Hikaru Nakamura who has surged to the #3 position on the world ranking. The average rating is 2743, an increase from last year, but aided by fewer players. Fabiano Caruana and Sergey Karjakin lead a strong contingent of young player, but are sandwiched by irrepressible Boris Gelfand, the lone representative from the 40-over age group.

The field is rather balanced and touts a lot of diversity with only host Netherlands fielding more than one player from 11 nations. The good feature is that the Netherlands has lifted the required three Dutch players. In previous years they were bottom feeders. Interestingly, no player from Azerbaijan is competing. The country is in mourning still reeling by the loss of GM Vugar Gashimov. There will certainly be a recognition of his contribution to chess.

Magnus Carlsen is not competing, but Levon Aronian will try to win out going into the Candidates Match. Photo by Frits Agterdenbos of ChessVista.

Tata Steel is an Indian multinational conglomerate consisting of a number of industries. Those following the tournament from the early days will remember it as the Hoorgovens, a Dutch steel company that would later merge with British steel to form the Corus Group. When Tata steel purchased Corus in 2007, the tournament took on the name of Indian conglomerate.

Official Site: https://www.tatasteelchess.com/
Tata Steel (YouTube Channel): https://www.youtube.com/user/freshmenmedia/

2014 Tata Steel Tournament January 10th-26th, 2014 (Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands)
Group A
#	Name	Title	Federation	Flag	Rating
1	Aronian, Levon	GM	Armenia		2812
2	Nakamura, Hikaru	GM	USA		2789
3	Caruana, Fabiano	GM	Italy		2782
4	Gelfand, Boris	GM	Israel		2777
5	Karjakin, Sergey	GM	Russia		2759
6	Dominguez, Leinier	GM	Cuba		2754
7	Giri, Anish	GM	Netherlands		2734
8	So, Wesley	GM	Philippines		2719
9	Naiditsch, Arkadij	GM	Germany		2718
10	Harikrishna, Pentala	GM	India		2698
11	Rapport, Richard	GM	Hungary		2621
12	Van Wely, Loek	GM	Netherlands		2672
Group B
#	Name	Title	Federation	Flag	Rating
1	Wojtaszek, Radek	GM	Poland		2711
2	Jobava, Baadur	GM	Georgia		2710
3	Yu, Yangyi	GM	China		2677
4	Saric, Ivan	GM	Croatia		2637
5	Timman, Jan	GM	Netherlands		2607
6	Brunello, Sabino	GM	Italy		2602
7	Reinderman, Dimitri	GM	Netherlands		2593
8	Zhao, Xue	GM	China		2567
9	Muzychuk, Anna	GM	Slovenia		2566
10	Bok, Benjamin	IM	Netherlands		2560
11	Duda, Jan-Krzysztof	GM	Poland		2553
12	Troff, Kayden	IM	USA		2457
13	Goudriaan, Etienne	IM	Netherlands		2431
14	Van Delft, Merijn	IM	Netherlands		2430
Official Site