https://tatasteelchess.com/masters/masters-pairings/
There is also a separate, concurrent “Challengers” tournament featuring young rising stars. Winning the Challengers tournament gets you an invite to the next Masters tournament.
https://lichess.org/broadcast
The tenth item provides a link to a “broadcast” of the Tata Steel Chess tournament so one can “watch” in real-time what goes down. With little delay one can see the position and reflection time left.
Don’t expect video of the action; I’m unclear where that can be found, but will be sure to relay my findings once they’re found.
IMPORTANT: The time difference actually works well for MetroBratt residents (all times ET): the games begin at 7am–no need to view
@10.15am look in and see who might be in time trouble
@11-11.30am somebody’s in time trouble and other games are coming to an inflection point or have been finished.
After that it really depends on the game. If an interesting endgame occurs play might continue as late as 2pm.
In the early evening https://theweekinchess.com will have the games in full along with light commentary.
This tournament endures because the Dutch are a chess-mad people.
And now, the verbose parts:
Those with more than passing interest in over-the-board (OTB) chess keep tabs on at least 3 events:
- The World Chess Championship match, which now happens biannually. A few months ago Ding Liren became the 17th modern World Champion, a big notch in the belt of the Chinese Communist party. He’s playing in this tournament purely for its long history and elite quality of competition.
- The Candidates Tournament, again biannually, where 8 competitors who qualified in various and frequently quite difficult ways play each other twice. The winner becomes the Challenger for the crown described in the previous item.
- The name of the tournament has changed frequently; it’s now Tata Steel Chess, but I call it the Wijk aan Zee tournament as the location barely changed since 1938. This is the 86th incarnation of the event; yes, even with a truly vital resistance movement, WWII forced cancellation only 2 or 3 times in the occupied Netherlands. This tournament is shorter but of extremely high quality.
The time control is vital to comprehending the action; since it’s the 21st century, Classical time controls are
TC100:50:15+30spm
— translated–
1. Each player has 100m to make their first 40 moves; after making their 40th move, 50 minutes are added to the clock for the next 20 moves
2. Beginning with the first move, after every move the player receives an additional 30s on his clock
Running out of time results in instant loss of game unless the “winner” doesn’t have mating material, in which case the game is drawn. In elite tournaments this rarely happens, though the 2013 Candidates saw one player lose on time at least thrice, thoroughly skewing the competitive balance of the event.
bovada.lv will let you wager on the games; I imagine most sportsbooks offer the same.
I may or may not post periodic, irregular updates on the tournament.
I somewhat botched the explanation of the time control
This post was supposed to be up on the site Sat 13 Jan, but I guess everybody got pushed back a day due to the holiday weekend.
second try, with the addition of 1c below
The time control is vital to comprehending the action; since it’s the 21st century, Classical time controls are
TC100:50:15+30spm
— translated–
1a. Each player has 100m to make their first 40 moves;
b. After making their 40th move, 50 minutes are added to the clock;
c. After making their 60th move, 15 minutes are added to the clock
2. Beginning with the first move, after every move the player receives an additional 30s on his clock
The second point is quite important; if a player gets into desperate time trouble, he can actually gain time on the clock by taking less than 30 seconds to make a move. In the endgame many of the best moves available are crystal-clear so an interesting endgame can take place and the players–if they managed the clock properly–will have sufficient time to apply themselves to the interesting aspects of the endgame.
So the games certainly commence at 8am ET; around 11.30am the tightly contested games are in full throttle.
By noon most of the games have concluded, but there should be one or two still going.
The history of the tournament:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_Steel_Chess_Tournament
One of things that makes this a decent spectator sport is that most everyone will not agree to a quick draw (as in few moves). The chess world is in a different place than it was even just ten years ago, so fighting to the last is now the typical mindset.
It’s worth following both the Challengers as well as the Masters tournament; a few of the Challengers are on the verge of being “household names” in the chess world.
And finally, a note about lichess.org, which does a reasonably competent job of broadcasting the tournaments:
By default, the dark theme is used.
This was a terrible decision; it has been well-established for decades that bright text on a dark screen promotes eye strain.
Make an account–a brief annoyance–and then click on your account name in the upper-right of the screen.
Click Background and then choose Light.
Your eyes will thank you.
The location of links to the broadcast of the two tournaments at lichess.org/broadcast seems to vary day-to-day.
theweekinchess.com will have post-mortem analysis a handful of hours after play ends, so say by 5-6pm ET.
Top-notch roundup after the third round
https://theweekinchess.com/chessnews/events/86th-tata-steel-2024/giri-joins-firouzja-in-the-lead-of-the-tata-steel-masters-on-2.53
Further, I am busting-out excited to report that Tata Steel is featuring a third tournament, the Amateurs which is a cut lower than the Challengers.
This news is so encouraging as the Wijk aan Zee tournament cut the third tournament once the Great Recession hit. One bit a left out is that winning the Amateurs gets you a spot in next year’s Challengers, and likewise winning the Challengers gets you a spot in next year’s Masters.