Corus Chess Tournament

Thursday, 21 January 2010 06:41

The 2010 Corus Chess Tournament is taking place from 15th until 31st January 2010 in Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands. The winner of the top group will qualify for the Grand Slam Final 2010.

The Corus has three main tournaments. They are played according to the round-robin system, whereby each competitor plays in turn against every other during the tournament. All three Grandmaster groups have 14 players and start on January 16th. All rounds begin at 13:30 hours, except for the last round on January 31st, which begins at 12.30 hours.

The first rest day arrived after four rounds of fierce fighting. Alexei Shirov is off to a flying start in the top group A, having scored all four wins, and is now full point ahead of the chasing pack. "If I try to play for a draw with Black in the Petroff, I lose, and when I try to win with White I also lose." - Shirov shared for the official website. Thus far, Alexey Shirov earned three IJmond Veelzijdig prizes, awarded by the commentator GM Ivan Sokolov for the best game of the day in each group.Hikaru Nakamura continues to play in fantastic shape after the World Team Chess Championship and signs nice wins against van Wely and Short. Tied on the second place with Nakamura are Magnus Carlsen and Vassily Ivanchuk. Dutch Grandmasters Loek van Wely and Jan Smeets are holding a negative record with three consecutive losses each.

In the B group former Russian and now Dutch wonderboy Anish Giri and experienced Chinese Ni Hua are sharing the first place with three points each. Giri beat the top Grandmasters P. Harikrishna and Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu at the beginning, while Ni also scored against strong opposition - Emil Sutovsky and Finland's Tomy Nyback. The two leaders split point ina head-to-head encounter in the 4th round. Dmitry Reinderman, another local Grandmaster, is last with only half a point which he took off from Giri.

Two future stars, Li Chao and Ray Robson, are dominating the mixed C tournament, and both have collected 3.5 points from four games. The nearest followers are full point behind, but the race is still long with nine rounds to go.

The action continues on Thursday, tune in to follow the games on the official website. A number of other chess services provide live expert commentary on selected games.