Special feature: Tata Steel 2012
| Wijk aan Zee |
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Articles inside (13)
The first super-GM tournament of the year, featuring Magnus Carlsen, is the traditional Wijk aan Zee event which takes place from the 14th to the 29th of January 2012. This is arguably the strongest ever edition and includes seven from the World's top ten in the featured A-Group.
The policy of the organizers is to invite to some of the World's up-and-coming stars to their three closed tournaments. In contrast, participating this year in Group B, there will be living legend Jan Timman.
The time control is 100' (+30")/40, then 50' (+30")/20, then 15' (+30") KO.
Here are this year's participants:
The A-Group:
| Seed | Name | Age | FED | Elo |
World rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Magnus Carlsen | 21 | NOR | 2835 | 1 |
| 2 | Levon Aronian | 29 | ARM | 2805 | 2 |
| 3 | Teimour Radjabov | 24 | AZE | 2773 | 5 |
| 4 | Veselin Topalov | 36 | BUL | 2770 | 6 |
| 5 | Sergey Karjakin | 22 | RUS | 2769 | 7 |
| 6 | Vassily Ivanchuk | 42 | UKR | 2766 | 8 |
| 7 | Vugar Gashimov | 25 | AZE | 2761 | 10 |
| 8 | Hikaru Nakamura | 24 | USA | 2759 | 12 |
| 9 | Boris Gelfand | 43 | ISR | 2739 | 16 |
| 10 | Fabiano Caruana | 19 | ITA | 2736 | 17 |
| 11 | Gata Kamsky | 37 | USA | 2732 | 20 |
| 12 | Anish Giri | 17 | NED | 2714 | 28 |
| 13 | David Navara | 26 | CZE | 2712 | 30 |
| 14 | Loek Van Wely | 39 | NED | 2692 | 54 |
The participation of veteran Jan Timman in the B-Group will be a boon for Dutch chess fans:
| Rk | Name | Age | FED | Elo | World rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lazaro Bruzon Batista | 29 | CUB | 2691 | 55 |
| 2 | Vladimir Potkin | 29 | RUS | 2684 | 65 |
| 3 | Sergei Tiviakov | 38 | NED | 2677 | 70 |
| 4 | Alexander Motylev | 32 | RUS | 2677 | 72 |
| 5 | Pentala Harikrishna | 25 | IND | 2665 | 82 |
| 6 | Sipke Ernst | 33 | NED |
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