The World Champion Viswanathan Anand, his most recent challenger Boris Gelfand, former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik and rising star Fabiano Caruana will be competing in the second Zurich Chess Challenge. From 23 February to 1 March 2013 they will face each other in a double round-robin tournament at the Savoy Hotel in Zurich, Switzerland. In the first Zurich Chess Challenge, Vladimir Kramnik faced Levon Aronian in a match, in April 2012.

The Hotel Savoy Baur en Ville in Zurich, where the tournament will be held

After a successful first Zurich Chess Challenge, the match between Aronian and Kramnik in April 2012 (which ended in 3-3), main sponsor Oleg Skvortsov decided to organize a new event. Staged by the Zurich Chess Club, a 4-player double round robin will be held with four of the strongest players in the world: Anand, Caruana, Gelfand and Kramnik. The event will take place 23 February to 1 March 2013 at the Hotel Savoy Baur en Ville in Zurich.

The games will be played with a classical time control of 2 hours for 40 moves, 1 hour for the next 20 moves and 15 minutes plus a 30-second increment for the remainder of the game. In case of a draw before move 40, an additional exhibition (rapid) game will be played (result not counting).

Main sponsor Oleg Skvortsov of International Gemological Laboratories (Moscow) is a real chess lover. He also made possible the Aronian-Kramnik match and the recent friendly match between Dmitry Andreikin and Ian Nepomniachtchi. IGC is a Russian institute providing gemological services, such as diamond grading reports, enhanced diamonds identification, man-made/synthetic diamonds and imitation detection as well as certification of diamonds, gemstones and jewelry in the Russian Federation.

The 2013 tournament marks the 60th anniversary of the legendary Zurich 1953 Candidates' Tournament. It was the strongest tournament of the 1950s, with the best grandmasters in the world, with the exception of world champion Mikhail Botvinnik. Sixty years ago the fight for first place was also mainly between four players: Smyslov, Keres, Bronstein and Reshevsky. Smyslov won the tournament, and Bronstein would write a book which is still considered to be one of the best chess books ever written. 

For Kramnik and Gelfand the super tournament in 2013 in Zurich will be a kind of "dress rehearsal" for the highly important London Candidates Tournament a month later, which will select a challenger for the Anand in the next World Championship match. With the participation of the World Champ himself and rising star Fabiano Caruana, the Zurich Chess Challenge promises to be one of the highlights of the upcoming chess year.