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Zurich Chess Challenge 2014: Carlsen steals show
and wins title
-DR. ABDUL RUFF COLACHAL
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World Champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway emerged winner
of the Zurich Chess Challenge 2014 both in classical chess and in
combined standings after classical and rapid games held on 29 January-04
February at Zurich.
The Zurich Chess
Challenge is one of the major recurring international chess
tournaments. The Zurich Chess Challenge 2014 took place from 29 January to
4 February 2014. The average rating of its participants is 2801, the
highest in history, and it is also the first category 23 tournament
ever. Magnus Carslen won the tournament.
The opening day included five rounds of blitz to
decide the draw, which was won by Magnus Carlsen. The main tournament
consists of five rounds of classical chess and finally five rounds
of rapid chess on the closure day.
The Zurich Chess Challenge 2014, the strongest tournament
in history with average elo 2801, started with a blitz event on 29th
January at Hotel Savoy in Zurich, Switzerland.
Magnus Carlsen and Levon Aronian shared the first
place with 3,0/5 points each in the event that determined the starting numbers
in the main tournament.
The results in the classical games were counted as 2 points for
a win and 1 point for a draw. The results in the rapid games were counted as 1
point for a win and half a point for a draw.
In the classical tournament Magnus Carlsen had the best score of
8 points- 3 wins, 2 draws. For games that ended in a draw in fewer than 40
moves, a subsequent rapid game between the two players was mandatory, although
these particular rapid games had no relevance to the tournament standings. Two
such games were played: Gelfand–Aronian (0–1) in the third round and
Gelfand–Nakamura (1–0) in the fifth round.
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Earlier, Magnus Carlsen had won the World Chess
Championship 2013 was played from November 7-22 at the Hyatt Regency
Chennai, India, between the then defending world champion V
Anand of India and him as the challenger Magnus Carlsen ,
winner of the 2013 World Championship Candidates Tournament. The match
gathered record-setting TV audiences in India, and huge interest around the
world. Carlsen won the match 6.5 to 3.5, after ten of the twelve scheduled
games, while Anand did not win even a single game.
After the winning the World Championship last year, Carlsen’s
better performance was widely expected at Zurich and he did display it.
It is now expected that both Israeli Chess allies Boris
Gelfand and Indo-Spaniard Anand should now retire. They
have failed constantly and remain at the bottom.
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Sven Magnus
Carlsen was born 30 November 1990) is a
Norwegian chess grandmaster, reigning World Chess
Champion and the No. 1 ranked player in the world. His
peak rating is 2872, the highest in history.
A chess prodigy,
in 2004 Carlsen became a grandmaster at the age of 13 years, 148 days, making
him at that time the second youngest grandmaster in history, although
he has since become the third youngest. On 1 January 2010, at the age of 19
years, 32 days, he became the youngest chess player in history to be
ranked world No.
On the
January 2013 FIDE rating list, Carlsen reached an Elo rating of 2861,
at that time the highest in history. In November 2013, Carlsen defeated V
Anand in the World Chess Championship 2013, thus becoming the
new world chess champion.
Known for his
attacking style as a teenager, Carlsen later developed into a more universal
player. He does not focus on opening preparation as much as other top
players, and plays a variety of openings, making it harder for opponents to
prepare against him. His positional mastery and endgame prowess
have drawn comparisons to those of former world champions before
him José Raúl Capablanca, Vasily Smyslov, and Anatoly Karpov.
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