Next Saturday the 74th Tata Steel Chess Tournament begins in Wijk aan Zee, The Netherlands. Today we give a preview, and we’ll post three interviews with distinguished participants in the coming days!

The Tata Steel Chess Tournament, which runs from January 13th till 29th in Wijk aan Zee, 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 14th. All rounds begin at 13:30 CET, except for the last round on January 29th, which begins at 12.00 hours. There are rest days on January 18th, 23rd, and 26th. The time control is 100 minutes for 40 moves, followed by 50 minutes for 20 moves, then 15 minutes for the remaining moves with 30 seconds cumulative increment for each move starting from the first move.

Interviews

In the coming days we’ll publish three interviews with participants of this year’s Tata Steel tournament: a participant from each GM group who, in one way or another, makes some kind of ‘comeback’ in Wijk aan Zee. Tomorrow we’ll have top seed in the C Group: Matthew Sadler. On Thursday we’ll publish and interview with the legendary Dutch grandmaster Jan Timman and on Friday we have the winner of the 2005 FIDE World Championship in San Luis: Veselin Topalov. Stay tuned!

Yesterday we noted that the open tournament in Hastings is the longest running in the world, but the one in Wijk aan Zee is strong second. This year it’s already the 74th edition, so we can expect something special for next year. Perhaps this is the reason why especially GM group B looks slighly weaker than we’re used to, but surely we’re about to enjoy yet another great festival!

Tata Steel 2012 | Participants A group

Tata Steel 2012 | Participants B group

Tata Steel 2012 | Participants C group

Commentary schedule

The festival includes many side events as well. There are nine-round and three-round events and a rapid tournament, where hundreds of amateurs in total will participate. On Sunday, January 29th the International Solving Championship (ISC) will take place. The solving championship will be held simultaneously in various countries at the very same time. In 2011 more than 200 solvers from 28 countries took part and the winner was the English GM John Nunn. More info here.

Below you’ll find some statistics of the 73 previous editions. You can find much more at the special statistics page on the official website.

Wijk aan Zee statistics