Tuesday 7 May 2013

And on to Norway

Last week it was the Alekhine Memorial, this week it is Norway Chess 2013. This 10 player tournament is headed by hometown hero Magnus Carlsen, with Lev Aronian, Veselin Topalov, Viswanathan Anand, Hikaru Nakamura, Peter Svidler, Sergey Karjakin, Teimour Radjabov, Wang Hao and Jon Ludvig Hammer making up the rest of the field. The tournament has 9 of the top 16 players in the world taking part, with Hammer being the only player from further down the rating list.
The tournament opens tonight, with a lightning event starting at 1700 (Norway time), which is 1am Canberra time. Tomorrow sees the first round, which will start a couple of hours earlier (11pm Canberra time).
Obviously Carlsen is favourite to win the event, but both Anand and Topalov seem to be on the improve. However they, and second seed Aronian have all just finished tough events (as have a few others), so whether they have the energy to take first place is still the question.

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