From March 14 to April 1, 2013, FIDE and AGON – the World Chess Federation’s commercial partner – are staging the 2013 Candidates Tournament for the World Chess Championship 2013. It will be the strongest tournament of its kind in history. The venue is The IET, 2 Savoy Place, London. The Prize Fund to be shared by the players totals €510,000. The winner of the Candidates will become the Challenger to Viswanathan Anand who has reigned as World Champion since 2007. The main sponsor for the Candidates is State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic SOCAR, which has sponsored elite events chess in the past.

Round one express report

The first round of the Candidates was not quite anti-climactic, but anyone hoping for major upsets or heroic wins will have to wait until the players shrug off their caution. The game between Levon Aronian and Magnus Carlsen was a tame affair and neither pushed the pace.

Carlsen (above) played a line that IM Pein described as reminiscent of Petrosian, and that would seem as appropriate as possible for the Norwegian.

Aronian (above middle) was less happy and had hoped to at least be the one threatening to pressure the other as White, but instead found himself close to having to worry, a less than ideal start.

Vassily Ivanchuk (above) is said to have a huge score against Grischuk, though to the Russian’s defense, he had black in ten of their twelve classical games, now eleven of thirteen. No loss today, though the Ukrainian was the one with the initiative throughout.

Peter Svidler (above) faced Vladimir Kramnik and a Gruenfeld was the name of the game. Even though it was the encounter that presented the most chances for a decisive result, in favor of the six-time Russian champion, it never quite swung off balance that far and they too drew.

Boris Gelfand faced a savvy Teimour Radjabov (above FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov makes the first move), who played a seemingly innocuous opening with unambitious looking moves such as e6 and d6. The general feeling was that the Azeri player was baiting Gelfand into trying to punish him for his opening play, but whatever the reason, the Israeli was on his guard and did not get himself into trouble.

Yes, Magnus, that's what it is like when you are a star...

All pictures by Anastasiya Karlovich

Wrap-up analysis from London by GM Daniel King

Official broadcast

The navigation page of the World Chess livestream

Live commentary provided in round one by IMs Lawrence Trent and Malcolm Pein

Afterwards there is postgame analysis, above for instance with Peter Svidler

The other links are to the live games (above Gelfand-Radjabov), with chat by registered visitors

Replay all games of the round

Select games from the dropdown menu above the board

Schedule and results

The games start at 14:00h = 2 p.m. London time = 15:00h European time, 17:00h Moscow, 8 a.m. New York. You can find your regional starting time here. Note that Britain and Europe switch to Summer time on March 31, so that the last two rounds will start an hour earlier for places that do not swich or have already done so (e.g. USA). The commentary on Playchess begins one hour after the start of the games and is free for premium members.

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games will be broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.