Zurich Chess Challenge 2014 – Strongest Tournament in Chess History begins Jan 29

Chess Blog for Daily Chess News and Trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2013

Hello everyone,

«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).

This brilliant event, which will take place in the extraordinary familial environment of the ballroom of the Hotel Savoy, has already caught the attention throughout the world and led to the registration of many journalists and top-players, including Peter Leko, Jan Timman and Gennadi Sosonko. 

Further, the Chinese women's world-champion Hou Yifan will attend this unique occasion and will be playing a simultaneous exhibition with clocks against 6 top Swiss juniors on 1 February at 1 p.m. at the Zurich «Zunfthaus zur Saffran».

For the «Zurich Chess Challenge 2014», a blitz tournament will determine the color distribution on the first day (29 February). Five rounds of classical chess will then be played from Thursday to Monday (30 January to 3 February), followed by a rapid tournament with reversed colors on the last day (4 February).

The owner of «IGC International Gemological Laboratories», Mr. Oleg Skvortsov, is the creator of this chess event. He not only loves chess, but also plays chess and supports chess events. Furthermore, Mr. Skvortsov knows many of the greatest chess players in the world personally and has played a lot of games with them.

The «Zurich Chess Club» is very proud to be the organizer and host of this unique event and it would like to thank the main tournament sponsor and chess-enthusiast Oleg Skvortsov, whose generous contribution has allowed for this extraordinary event to take place! We look forward to welcoming all our friends from throughout the chess world either at the Hotel Savoy or live via the Internet!

All games will be commented by GM Yannick Pelletier and IM Werner Hug and broadcast live via the Internet at the official website.


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