Aronian Wins Tata Steel Chess Championship

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WIJK aan ZEE, Netherlands (ArmeniaNow) — Armenian grandmaster Levon Aronian has won the top prize at an international competition that ended on Sunday, January 29.

In the 13th and final round of the annual Tata Steel tournament here, Aronian earned a draw against Azeri grandmaster Teimour Radjabov to score nine points overall and finish on top among 14 competitors.

Norway’s Magnus Carlsen, Italy’s Fabiano Caruana and Radjabov shared second-fourth places, each scoring eight points.

This year Tata Steel stood out for Aronian in terms of the impressive record of victories that he had. The Armenian grandmaster scored seven wins in 13 games, tying four and losing two. One of those two defeats for Aronian came early on from Carslen, the leader of FIDE’s current classification and the other favorite to win the tournament. But Aronian recovered quickly and managed to reach the finish line first despite an unfortunate Round 11 defeat to less experienced Czech grandmaster David Navara.

Among Aronian’s victories were those against players such as Israel’s Boris Gelfand, who is the challenger at the next FIDE World Championship later this year, Russian Sergey Karjakin, Hikaru Nakamura from the United States and others.

Aronian’s win over American Gata Kamsky was recognized as the best win of the tournament’s round four. The other Armenian player, Elina Danielian, who took part in the tournament’s grandmaster Group C, finished ninth.

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