fbpx

It’s Almost Chess Time in Wijk ann Zee

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. 

Website: https://dailychessmusings.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN094_thod08xSv675DlYjQ

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DailyChessMusings

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TorresChess

Chess.com

Daily Chess Musings Club on Chess.com: https://www.chess.com/club/daily-chess-musings/join 

Email: DailyChessMusings@gmail.com

Published by chessmusings

Chris Torres is a nationally renowned scholastic chess coach working in the San Francisco Bay Area. His classes have attracted players of strengths ranging from rank beginners to world champions. A chess professional since 1998, Chris is widely recognized as one of the main driving forces behind the explosion in popularity and sudden rise in quality of scholastic chess in California. Chris Torres served as the President of the Torres Chess and Music Academy from 2005-2020 and currently is recognized as a correspondence chess master with the United States Chess Federation. Since 1998 Chris Torres has taught 6 individual national champions as well as led multiple school teams to win national championship titles. In addition, Chris Torres has directed and taught at 10 different schools which have been California State Champions at chess. In 2011 and 2012, several former and current students of Chris Torres have been selected to represent the United States at the World Youth Chess Championships. Mr. Torres’ hobbies include playing classical guitar and getting his students to appear on the national top 100 chess rating lists.

Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this: