It doesn't take much to understand that the Altibox Norway Chess is the strongest tournament of the year. The line-up is simply amazing, with an average rating of 2797.2. Four of the ten players are in the 2800+ club, and the "weakest" - namely Anish Giri - sports a monster rating of 2771!  It's easy to think that among those super-top players there could be the next challenger to Carlsen's throne, and this makes the tournament even more captivating for the chess fans. Carlsen, in this single round robin, will have to defend his title and leadership against the likes of Nakamura, Caruana, Wesley So,  Giri, Karjakin, MVL; not to mention the old guard, with heavyweights such as Anand, Aronian, and Kramnik.

Participants N NAME COUNTRY ELO YOB RK 1 Carlsen, Magnus NOR 2832 1990 1 2 So, Wesley USA 2812 1993 2 3 Kramnik, Vladimir RUS 2808 1975 3 4 Caruana, Fabiano USA 2805 1992 4 5 Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime FRA 2795 1990 6 6 Aronian, Levon ARM 2793 1982 7 7 Anand, Viswanathan IND 2786 1969 8 8 Nakamura, Hikaru USA 2785 1987 9 9 Karjakin, Sergey RUS 2781 1990 11 10 Giri, Anish NED 2771 1994 12

 

Tournament information:

From June 5th to June 16th Rest days: 9th and 13th June Venue: Clarion Hotel Energy - Stavanger (Norway) Play starts at 10 AM EDT (16:00 local - Europe) Tournament format: Single Round Robin - 9 rounds Time control: 100 minutes for 40 moves+ 50 minutes for the next 20 moves + 15 minutes to finish, with 30 second increment from move 1 Sofia rules apply In case of a tie, it will be broken with two games at time control 3+2

As usual, the Norwegian world champion is the favorite, but it won't be easy to prevail in such an incredibly strong group of top dogs.

It doesn't happen every day to see all the top players reunited, and this year the Altibox event resembles a world championship, if a round-robin tournament were the method to assign the crown.

ICC will have a Game Of the Day video for each round, free to watch for everyone, and published on ICC's YouTube channel.

The ICC's dream team of commentators, with Ronen Har-Zvi, Lars Bo-Hansen, John Fedorowicz, Larry Christiansen, Jon Speelman, John Watson, and Christof Sielecki, will share their analysis.

GM Alex Yermolinsky will go LIVE on ICCTV to share his thoughts after round 2 and round 8.