Tata Steel Chess Tournament

The Tata Steel Chess Tournament is an annual chess tournament held in January in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands. It was called the Hoogovens Tournament from its creation in 1938 until the sponsor Koninklijke Hoogovens merged with British Steel to form the Corus Group in 1999, after which the tournament was called the Corus Chess Tournament. Corus Group became Tata Steel Europe in 2007. Despite the name changes, the series is numbered sequentially from its Hoogovens beginnings; for example, the 2011 event was referred to as the 73rd Tata Steel Chess Tournament.^[1][2]

Top grandmasters compete in the tournament, but regular club players are welcome to play as well. The Masters group pits fourteen of the world's best against each other in a round-robin tournament, and has sometimes been described as the "Wimbledon of Chess".^[3][4] Since 1938, there has been a long list of famous winners, including Max Euwe, Bent Larsen, Tigran Petrosian, Paul Keres, Lajos Portisch, Boris Spassky, Mikhail Botvinnik, Mikhail Tal, Viktor Korchnoi, Jan Timman, Anatoly Karpov, Vasyl Ivanchuk, Vladimir Kramnik, Garry Kasparov, Viswanathan Anand, Veselin Topalov, Levon Aronian, Sergey Karjakin, and Magnus Carlsen. Of the ten World Chess Champions since the first tournament in 1938, only four – Alexander Alekhine, Vasily Smyslov, Bobby Fischer, and Ding Liren – have not won it. In 2001, nine of the top ten players in the world participated.

Magnus Carlsen holds the record for most wins at the tournament, with eight titles to his name. Anand is the only other player to have won the event five or more times. Anand also holds the record of most consecutive games played at the tournament without a loss (70 – from 1998 to 2004).