Saturday 14 January 2012

Tata Steel 2012 tipping!

"You might be a really good chess player, but I'm much better at waiting than you!"
A waitress being mean to GM Zhao at the Australian Championships
by Junta

After the Australian Championships finished a week ago, where we bid a year's farewell to Fedja who'll be on exchange in Holland for 2012, he's replaced here in Queenstown, NZ by Andrew.

Each of us have played here, in this 'adventure capital of the world', before, and after checking out the familiar tournament hall at the Millennium Hotel several hours ago, we've kicked into chess mode and can't wait to play from tomorrow.

But on the other side of the world, in Wijk aan Zee, perhaps the most exciting chess tournament of the year is about to start - after watching the official tournament video covering the opening day (the interviews are nice to watch), we agreed that it was simply impossible to not follow the games live tonight.

Here are our tips for the three groups of the 74th Tata Steel tournament (A, B, C):
In the A Group are Carlsen, Aronian, Radjabov, Topalov, Karjakin, Ivanchuk, Gashimov, Nakamura, Gelfand, Caruana, Kamsky, Giri, Navara, Van Wely for a tournament record average of 2755.

Andrew
A Group: 1st Carlsen 9/13, 2nd Ivanchuk 8.5, 3rd Aronian 8, 4th-5th Karjakin, Topalov 7.5
B Group winner: Tiviakov with 9.5/13
C Group winner: Turov with 10/13

Fedja
A Group: 1st Topalov 9/13, 2nd-3rd Aronian, Carlsen 8.5, 4th-5th Karjakin, Kamsky 7.5
B Group winner: Harikrishna with 9.5/13
C Group winner: Adhiban with 10/13

Junta
A Group: 1st Aronian 9/13, 2nd-3rd Carlsen, Radjabov 8.5, 4th Nakamura 8,
5th Karjakin 7.5
B Group winner: Potkin with 9/13
C Group winner: Sadler with 10/13

Moulthun
A Group: 1st Ivanchuk 9/13, 2nd-3rd Aronian, Carlsen 8.5, 4th-5th Nakamura, Kamsky 7.5
B Group winner: Tiviakov with 9.5/13
C Group winner: Grover with 10.5/13



Trivia questions:
Between Moulthun and I, we've played 7 of the 42 Tata Steel participants in tournament games.
1. Who are the 7 players?
2. We won against a player from the A group. Which player was it?

2 comments:

  1. I can only guess the answer to 2, which I think is Loek Van Wely?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm tipping:

    A group Aronian
    B Group Potkin
    C Group Sadler

    Same as Junta :)

    ReplyDelete