The Zurich Chess Challenge has been an annual chess tournament in Zurich since 2012 . As an event with a world-class cast, the tournament follows the tradition of the Candidates' Tournament for the World Chess Championship, which was held at the same location in 1953 .
The Zurich Chess Challenge in April 2012 was a six-game duel between Levon Aronjan and Wladimir Kramnik , who at that time occupied places 2 and 3 in the FIDE world rankings. The competition ended in a draw. Aronjan won the first game, Kramnik the third. Four games ended in a draw.
2013 edition
From February 23 to March 1, 2013, the Zurich Chess Challenge was held as a double-round tournament with four participants. At that time, the participating players were among the top 20 in the current world rankings.
From January 29 to February 4, 2014 six players played for the Zurich Chess Challenge 2014. The event was the first tournament ever to reach category 23. At the time of the tournament, all participants were among the top 10 in the world rankings. First of all, the starting positions for the allocation of starting numbers were determined in a blitz tournament. This was followed by a tournament with a classic cooling-off period and a rapid chess tournament. An overall rating was calculated from the last two tournaments, with the classic tournament having double valuation.
In order to achieve a higher weighting of this tournament for the overall ranking, the number of points has been doubled compared to the usual counting method.
The tournament took place from February 13th to 19th, 2015. The six participants were among the top 12 in the FIDE world rankings. The tournament reached category 22. The game mode was the same as in 2014.
In order to achieve a higher weighting of this tournament for the overall ranking, the number of points has been doubled compared to the usual counting method.
The above order results in 1st and 2nd place, taking into account the fine evaluation. Then a playoff was played with only one blitz game, which Nakamura won against Anand.
Held in 2016
In 2016 the tournament was held between February 12th and 15th. This year only rapid chess and blitz chess (5 rounds each) were played. While Hikaru Nakamura and Viswanathan Anand shared 1st and 2nd place in rapid chess, Nakamura won the blitz tournament and the overall ranking by fine evaluation . At the same time, there was a friendship match over two games between Boris Gelfand and Alexander Morozevich .
Rapid chess tournament
The results of the rapid chess games were weighted twice compared to the blitz games, so that a win contributed 2 points and a draw 1 point to the overall ranking.
Fabiano Caruana
Viswanathan Anand
Vladimir Kramnik
Boris Gelfand
Magnus Carlsen
Levon Aronjan
Hikaru Nakamura
Alexei Shirov
Anish Giri
