Havana, Oct 12 (IANS): Cuban Grand Master Leinier Dominguez, one of the best Latin America chess players, will compete in next year’s prestigious Dutch tournament Tata Steel Jan 11-26, media reports here said.
According to communist youth daily Juventud Rebelde, the competition will gather players with a high average coefficient of 2744 Elo points. Dominguez, ranked 12th worldwide, has 2,753 Elo points, Xinhua reported.
Ten of the world’s top 15 players are expected to compete in the event, including the Armenian Levon Aronian (No. 3 in the world with 2795 Elo points), U.S. player Hikaru Nakamura (No. 5, 2783), the Italian Fabiano Caruana (No. 6, 2779), Israel’s Boris Gelfand (No. 9, 2765), the Russian Sergey Karjakin (No. 10, 2762) and the Dutch Anish Giri (No. 15, 2749).
Other accomplished chess players taking part in the event are Germany’s Arkadi Naiditsch (No. 26, 2724), the Filipino Wesley So (No. 41, 2706), the Dutch Loek van Wely (No. 55, 2693) and the Hungarian Richard Rapport (No. 71, 2676).
The event marks the third time Dominguez competes in the Dutch contest, after finishing sixth in 2009 and ninth in 2010.
Last year’s edition was won by the Norwegian Magnus Carlsen ( 2870).
The Tata Steel tournament was formerly known by the name of the city that traditionally hosted the event, Wijk aan Zee, then named Corus and finally given its current name.
