Sunday 14 June 2015

Norway 2015

The Norway Chess 2015 event kicks off this Monday evening (Canberra time). Now in its third year, the event is also the first tournament in the 2015 Grand Chess Tour. The tournament is ridiculously strong, with most of the top 10 taking part. It is very rare to see a tournament where Lev Aronian is only seeded 7th, but he is in this one.
The first event is the now traditional Blitz event. This will be played on Monday, and will determine the pairing numbers for the rest of the event. The tournament proper begins on Tuesday and runs until the 25th of June.
As it is in Norway I am going to tip Carlsen to finally win his home event. This is helped a little bit by the absence of Karjakin, who despite winning the previous two tournaments is not in the field this time. It will also be interesting to see how the resurgent Anand plays, but given recent form, I would not be surprised if he is on the podium at the end of the 9 rounds.
The tournament home page is 2015.norwaychess.com and you should find all the modern tournament goodies (live games, commentary, downloads etc) there.

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