Greetings Chess Players. My name is Chris Torres and this is my daily chess musing for January 12, 2021.
The 83rd edition of the Tata Steel chess tournament is now just three days away. The Tata Steel Chess Tournament is an annual chess competition held in January that attracts the world’s greatest chess minds to Wijk aan Zee, in the Netherlands. Originally founded in 1938, it was named the Hoogovens tournament until the sponsor Hoogovens merged with British Steel in 1999 to create the Corus Company, after which the tournament was called the Corus chess tournament. Then in 2007, the Corus Company became Tata Steel Europe so the name changed to its current form.
Over the years, many great chess players have travelled to the Netherlands to start off the year by taking a shot at winning this prestigious tournament. Some past winners, whose names you likely recognize include, Max Euwe, Bent Larsen, Tigran Petrosian, Paul Keres, Lajos Portisch, Boris Spassky, Mikhail Botvinnik, Mikhail Tal, Viktor Korchnoi, Jan Timman, Anatoly Karpov, Vassily Ivanchuk, Vladimir Kramnik, Garry Kasparov, Viswanathan Anand, Veselin Topalov, Levon Aronian, Sergey Karjakin, and, of course, Magnus Carlsen (whose seven titles is the most in history.) With so much prestige and history, The Tata Steel Chess Tournament closest analogue in sports is likely the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament.
The 2021 Tata Steel Chess Tournament, once again, has a very impressive field of competitors. Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Maxim Vachier-Lagrave, Anish Giri, Alireza Firouzja, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Pentala Harikrishna, Daniil Dubov, Radoslaw Wojtaszek, David Anton Guijarro, Andrey Esipenko, Jorden Van Foreest, Nils Grandelius and Aryan Tari will all start play on January 16th at 14:00 local time in Wijk aan Zee. I recommend visiting TataSteelChess.com for more information and live broadcasts of this year’s tournament. However, if you’re schedule doesn’t allow you to stay up all night watching the event live, I humbly advocate coming to this YouTube channel to see recaps of the days excitement in my daily chess musings.
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