More work to be done

Aronian Wins Tata Steel Chess 2014
By Jose “joeyj” Jereos Jr.
PhilBoxing.com
Tue, 28 Jan 2014

The 76th edition of Tata Steel Chess Tournament also well-known as Wijk aan Zee that took place for the first time in 3-locations for the Master’s Group (Grp-A): Wijk aan Zee (R1-R3,R5-R8,R10-R11), Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (R4) and High Tech Campus Eindhoven (R9 ) from 11-26 January 2014, was won by elite-GM Levon Aronian (2812) of Armenia. It is the 4th time that Aronian won in Wijk aan Zee. The other three were in 2007, 2008 and 2012.

Aronian displayed his fantastic form that as early as the penultimate round (R10) when he beat hyper-GM Leinier Dominguez(2754), he had clinched the title scoring 8.0/10 and an insurmountable 2-point lead. Despite his sorry loss in the last round (R11) when he blundered and lost a won game versus Loek Van Wely, when both were under time pressure, he finished Wijk aan Zee 2014 a sole 1st place winner scoring 8.0/11 with his 6wins-1loss-4draws (+6-1=4) record, a TPR of 2911, and gained a +13.7 in FIDE rating points to bring his Live Rating to 2825.7 or 2826 come Feb 2014 FIDE rating publication.

This 2826 rating come Feb 2014 will break his personal ‘PEAK Rating’ of 2825 that he registered on May 2012 FIDE rating list that will also retain his rank as World’s Nr 2.

Additionally, Levon’s R10 Live Rating of 2832.6 (Jan 25, 2014) also broke his highest ever Live Rating of 2829.7 that he registered on 21 Apr 2012 that ranked 3rd “Highest ever Live Rating” as published in the 2700chess.com chart, where Magnus Carlsen’s 2878.9 (Mar 27, 2013) rank 1st and Gary Kasparov’s 2856.7 (Mar 3, 2000) rank 2nd best.

Hyper-GMs Anish Giri (NED)2734 and Sergey Karjakin(RUS)2759 won 2nd and 3rd places respectively with both registering 6.5/11 points performances.

Philippines’ pride hyper-GM Wesley So (PHI) 2719 [who was recently awarded & honored by the Philippine Sportswriters Association (PSA) as the ‘Chess Player of the Year’ for bringing in the Philippines’ 1st ever Gold Medal in the World University Games, the 27th Summer Universiade, held in Kazan, Russia from 6-17 July 2013], a first timer in this prestigious, super and elite Category 20 (2726–2750 ELO/rating range] tournament whose 12-participants has an average rating of 2743, submitted a very significant results with his +3win-2loss=6draw scoring 6.0/11 points. Hyper-GMs Fabiano Caruana (ITA)2782 and Leinier Dominguez(CUB)2754 also submitted same score of 6.0/11, a triple tie for 4th place. But after tiebreak, Caruana @ 4th place, Dominguez @ 5th place & Wesley So @ 6th place overall. As for the prizes the three shared the 4th-6th prizes equally.

For the record, GM Wesley So’s Tournament Performace Rating (TPR) was 2781, way above (+62) his current official FIDE rating of 2719. His 2781 TPR was the 4th best among the 12 participants. Aronian was 1st with 2911, Giri 2809 was 2nd and Karjakin’s 2806 was 3rd best TPR.

Wesley So also had gained a +9.0 in rating points. Summing this up with his +9.7 rating points gained @ 2013 PAN-AM Chess Championship resulted to a Live Rating of 2737.7 that catapulted him to the Top 19 in the World Chess rating list.

In R5, Wesley So also registered his highest ever Live Rating of 2740.3 (Jan 17, 2014) when he defeated the 2012 World Chess Championship challenger hyper-GM Boris Gelfand (ISR)2777.

“Wesley finished with +1. Well done considering this is his 1st ever super tournament” kibitz by GM Susan Polgar (coach of GM Wesley So @WebsterU) at chessgames.com.

“Thank you @SusanPolgar for helping me improve on my chess career. I know, there is still a lot more work to do”. Twitted by Wesley So. 

Source: http://philboxing.com