Norway Chess 2013 Blitz Event
The Norway Chess 2013 super-tournament opened yesterday with a blitz competition to determine the pairings for the main event.
Sergey Karjakin took first place with 6½/9 points, with Magnus Carlsen second, Vishy Anand third and Hikaru Nakamura fourth, all with 6 points (separated only by tie-break rules - Carlsen by most games with the black pieces, Anand with 2 victories with black against Nakamura's 1).
In-form Veselin Topalov finished in a somewhat surprising last place with just 1/9.
The Norway 2013 Blitz Results
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The pairings for round 1
| CARLSEN Magnus | v | TOPALOV Veselin |
| ANAND Viswanathan | v | ARONIAN Levon |
| NAKAMURA Hikaru | v | WANG Hao |
| SVIDLER Peter | v | HAMMER Jon Ludvig |
| KARJAKIN Sergey | v | RADJABOV Teimour |
The pairings for the whole tournament are here.
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Norway Chess 2013 Line-up
| # | Name | Fed | Elo | Rank |
| 1 | Carlsen, Magnus | NOR | 2868 | 1 |
| 2 | Aronian, Levon | ARM | 2813 | 2 |
| 3 | Topalov, Veselin | BUL | 2793 | 4 |
| 4 | Anand, Viswanathan | IND | 2783 | 5 |
| 5 | Nakamura, Hikaru | USA | 2775 | 7 |
| 6 | Svidler, Peter | RUS | 2769 | 9 |
| 7 | Karjakin, Sergey | RUS | 2767 | 10 |
| 8 | Radjabov, Teimour | AZE | 2745 | 14 |
| 9 | Wang, Hao | CHN | 2743 | 16 |
| 10 | Hammer, Jon Ludvig | NOR | 2608 | 197 |
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The format is a single-round-robin and the official website promises live commentary from Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam and Simen Agdestein, as well as live game broadcasts and live video.
The time control is 100 mins for 40 moves, then 50 mins for 20 moves, and then 15 mins to a finish with a 30 second increment from the start. The "Sofia" anti-draw rules will apply.
The drawing of lots will be settled by a blitz tournament on the 7th of May at a time control of 4 min + 2 sec increment.
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Tournament Schedule (Times = UTC + 2)
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The main sponsors are the Norwegian companies HTH and Jadarhus, and it's hoped that the tournament will become a regular fixture in the calendar.
The event will also include a school tournament with hundreds of children, and a celebrity tournament with a range of celebrities showing off their chess skills!
Results table via Chessbase. All blitz games are at TWIC in a pgn file.
