Wijk Aan Zee (The Netherlands), Jan 12: World number two Viswanathan Anand starts his New Year with a campaign in his favourite tournament, the Corus Grandmasters Chess tournament at Wijk Aan Zee. Anand is seeking a record sixth title at the prestigious tournament.

Anand, who scored a record fifth win in the last edition of the event, is the second seed behind Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria. Also in the fray is Vladimir Kramnik, who won an acrimonious World Championships match against the Bulgarian recently.

Anand, sponsored by NIIT, is also scheduled to play in Linares and World Championships in Mexico later this year.

It is a strong category 19 classical chess tournament with 14 players, who clash in a round robin format. The average rating of the participants is 2719.

Other players in the field include Levon Aronian of Armenia, Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan, former World champion Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine and Peter Svidler of Russia.

There is additional Indian interest as Grandmasters ‘C’ tournament features the World's youngest GM Parimarjan Negi of Delhi. This is the second time Negi is playing the Corus event.

The tournament runs from Jan 12 to 28 with three rest days in between.

The complete list of players in Group A is: Topalov, Anand, Kramnik, Svidler, Aronian, Radjabov, David Navara, Alexei Shirov, Ruslan Ponomariov, Magnus Carlsen, Sergey Tiviakov, Loek van Wely, Sergey Karjakin and Alexander Motylev.