«Zurich Chess Challenge 2014» — The strongest tournament in chess history to date

On Wednesday, 29 of January 2014, the «Zurich Chess Challenge 2014» will commence at the Hotel Savoy. With six participants it is the first tournament in the history of chess to reach category 23 with an amazing average rating of 2801!
The star of the «Zurich Chess Challenge 2014» will be the newly crowned world-champion Magnus Carlsen. During his first tournament appearance since winning the world title last November, the 23-year old Norwegian will compete against his predecessor and former world-champion, Viswanathan Anand of India (number 9 in the world-ranking), the Armenian Levon Aronian (2), the American Hikaru Nakamura (3), the US-Italian Fabiano Caruana (6), as well as the Israeli Boris Gelfand (8).

If you are interested, all other information can be found at: http://www.zurich-cc.com/home.html.

So, Magnus or Aronian? Maybe Nakamura who not had a good result at Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2014? Or maybe a former world-champion did not say his last word?

Enjoy

Ah yes, I got an email from ICC.

Carlsen will win. Everyone knows that :D

:) But Magnus did not play tournaments for a while, maybe it could be a problem.. Also, Aronian has just finished the tournament with a great performance.. I wonder what he can do. It will be very interesting.

Cheers

Can someone watch the games live? They all seem stopped to me.

Yes, of course you can. But rounds of classical chess starting tomorrow (Thursday, January 30, 15:00 Round 1). Blitz tournament was played today just to determine the colors for the Classical tournament. So you're probably looking at the games that have already been played!

Cheers

Is that the Zurich timezone (UTC+01:00)?

http://new.livestream.com/chess24/events/2727830/videos/40906136
Very interesting opening choice by Magnus.. And in the end, very dangerous. He uses a kind of Reversed Budapest Gambit against Vishy Anand. So, if you want to surprise your opponent and to avoid theory, I think this may be useful.

Cheers

I was hoping for more from Naka. Perhaps he can kick into gear before this tournament slips away too.

I hope so. It would be great for the tournament. He didn't have the best of the opening against Fabiano Caruana but somehow eventually did get a small advantage into the ending. Although it was a very small advantage (+0.20 or something like that),he tried to win.

These are all games with analysis:

GM Nakamura, Hikaru (2789) - GM Caruana, Fabiano (2782):
http://en.lichess.org/analyse/p9am0g7u

GM Carlsen, Magnus (2872) - GM Gelfand, Boris (2777):
http://en.lichess.org/analyse/frlzo6ra

GM Aronian, Levon (2812) - GM Anand, Viswanathan (2773):
http://en.lichess.org/analyse/rx2pvzr3

Enjoy)

Lookiung forward to the Carlsen Aronian game. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict Aronian will win the tournament. Rooting for Carlsen 'tho!