Top 10 strongest tournaments ever

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Top 10 strongest tournaments ever

10.AVRO 1938 chess tournament

The AVRO tournament was a chess tournament held in the Netherlands in 1938, sponsored by the Dutch broadcasting company AVRO. The event was a double round-robin tournament. The eight players generally regarded as the strongest in the world took part: World Champion Alexander Alekhine, former champions José Raúl Capablanca and Max Euwe, future champion Mikhail Botvinnik and challengers Paul Keres, Reuben Fine, Samuel Reshevsky and Salo Flohr. Keres and Fine tied for first place, with Keres winning on tiebreak by virtue of his 1½-½ score in their individual games.

9.London chess classic 2015

In 2015, the London Chess Classic joined with Norway Chess and the Sinquefield Cup to form the Grand Chess Tour. Michael Adams was selected as the tournament wildcard and joins the other nine players already participating in the Grand Chess Tour. The winner was world chess champion Magnus Carlsen from Norway.

london-chess-classic-2015-1

8.Vienna 1882 chess tournament

The second international Vienna 1882 chess tournament was one of the longest and strongest chess tournaments ever played. According to the unofficial Chessmetrics ratings, the tournament was (as of March 2005) the strongest tournament in history, on the basis that nine of the ten top players in the world participated, including all of the top eight! The event was won by Wilhelm Steinitz and Szymon Winawer, who decided to share the first prize after they each won a play-off game. The special prize was awarded to Zukertort for the best performance against the top three. On May 12, Steinitz drew a game with Mackenzie, thus ending the longest winning streak in chess history. Steinitz at the time had won 25 consecutive games, the last draw he conceded was nine years earlier, on August 3 in the Vienna 1873 tournament. After this Steinitz would lose three consecutive games to Zukertort, Hruby, and Ware.

7. 76th Tata Steel Tournament 2015

The Tata Steel Chess Tournament, formerly called the Corus chess tournament, takes place every year, usually in January, in a small town called Wijk aan Zee, part of the larger Beverwijk in the province of North Holland in the Netherlands. From 1938 to 1967, the tournament took place in Beverwijk. The series has been numbered sequentially from its Hoogovens beginnings and hence, the 2011 event was referred to as the 73rd Tata Steel Chess Tournament on the official website. Very strong chess players compete in the prestigious tournament, but regular club players are welcome to play as well. The top “A” section pits 14 of the world’s best against each other in a round-robin tournament. Since 1938, there has been a long list of famous winners, including: Max Euwe, Bent Larsen, Tigran Petrosian, Paul Keres, Efim Geller, Lajos Portisch, Boris Spassky, Mikhail Botvinnik, Mikhail Tal, Viktor Korchnoi, Jan Timman, Anatoly Karpov, Vladimir Kramnik, Garry Kasparov, Viswanathan Anand, Veselin Topalov, Levon Aronian, Sergey Karjakin, Magnus Carlsen, and Hikaru Nakamura. In fact, of the “Classical” world chess champions since World War II, only the names of Vasily Smyslov and Bobby Fischer are missing. In 2001, nine of the top ten players in the world participated.
Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen are the only players to have won five titles of the Hoogovens/Corus/Tata Steel chess tournament in its long history, though three of Anand’s wins and one of Carlsen’s wins were shared. Anand also holds the record for most consecutive games played at this tournament without a loss (70 – from 1998 to 2004). Max Euwe, Lajos Portisch, Viktor Korchnoi, and Levon Aronian have won four times each at Beverwijk and Wijk aan Zee respectively. In the 76th edition of the tournament in 2015  winner was world chess champion Magnus Carlsen from Norway.

6. 44th Dortmund Sparkassen Chess Meeting 2016

The Dortmund Sparkassen Chess Meeting is an elite chess tournament held every summer in Dortmund, Germany. Dortmund is an invite-only event, with the exception that one slot at Dortmund is awarded to the winner of the annual Aeroflot Open in Moscow.
The tournament is usually played in a round-robin or double round-robin format. However, it took the form of a series of heads-up matches in 2002 and 2004. The 2002 Dortmund event was also notable in that it served as the Candidates Tournament for the Classical World Chess Championship 2004. Péter Lékó won, defeating Veselin Topalov in the finals. The title sponsor is Sparkasse Dortmund.

The 44th Dortmund Sparkassen Chess Meeting took place between July 9th to 17th in the “Orchesterzentrum NRW” in Dortmund, Germany. The eight-player round-robin tournament consisted of 7 games of Classical Chess. The field was led by Vladimir Kramnik, Fabiano Caruana, and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Players received 100 minutes for 40 moves, then 50 minutes for 20 additional moves, then 15 minutes for the rest of the game plus 30 seconds per move starting from move one.
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave won the tournament on July 16th with 1 game to spare. This was his first Dortmund tournament victory.

5.Linares International Chess Tournament 2000

The Linares International Chess Tournament (Spanish: Torneo Internacional de Ajedrez Ciudad de Linares) was an annual chess tournament, usually played around the end of February, which takes its name from the city of Linares in the Jaén province of Andalusia, Spain, in which it is held. It is sometimes described as the Wimbledon of chess, being one of the strongest annual tournaments held on the de facto chess tour, along with the “Tata Steel” Wijk aan Zee, Tal Memorial, and Dortmund events.
The Linares tournament began in 1978 and was held annually from 1988 to 2010 (with the exception of 1996). Since 2010, the tournament has not been held for economic reasons.

Linares 2000 –  cat. XXI (2751)
—————————————————————–
1: Garry Kasparov 2851 RUS              6
2: Vladimir Kramnik 2758 RUS         6
3: Peter Leko 2725 HUN                    4½
4: Alexander Khalifman 2656 RUS  4½
5: Viswanathan Anand 2769 IND    4½
6: Alexei Shirov 2751 ESP                  4½
—————————————————————–

4. 2nd European individual championship Ohrid 2001

In the peaceful city of Ohrid near the beautiful lake in Macedonia in 2001 was played one of the strongest chess tournaments . With more than 160 Grandmasters at one place who were competing for the first prize of $41000 this tournament has deserved to be 4th on this list of top 10 tournaments in chess history. First place took Sutovsky Emil, followed by the former world chess champion Ruslan Ponomariov and woman world chess champion Polgar Judit. Many Grandmasters weren’t so lucky, so the final standings had many Grandmasters with 2500+ rating points who were placed bellow 170th place.  You can see the final standings here

3.Hastings 1895

The Hastings 1895 chess tournament was a round-robin tournament of chess conducted in Hastings, England from August 5 to September 2, 1895. Hastings 1895 was arguably the strongest tournament in history at the time it occurred. All of the top players of the generation competed. It was one of the first times such a “super-tournament” was conducted. Harry Nelson Pillsbury won the tournament against a strong competitive group. Pillsbury, a young American unknown in Europe, was the surprise winner with 16½ out of 21 points – ahead of Mikhail Chigorin (16) and world champion Emanuel Lasker (15½). Following the success of the event, the Hastings tournament would become an annual feature.
The organizers and players produced a Book of the Tournament, in which the participants annotated their own games. Like the Tournament, the Book too became an annual feature and was of very high instructional value.

contestants_at_the_hastings_1895_international_chess_tournament

Masters at Hastings 1895.
Standing (from left to right): Albin, Schlechter, Janowski, Marco, Blackburne, Maróczy, Schiffers, Gunsberg, Burn, Tinsley. Seated: (from left to right) Vergani, Steinitz, Chigorin, Lasker, Pillsbury, Tarrasch, Mieses, Teichmann. Not present: von Bardeleben, Mason, Walbrodt

2. Nottingham 1936 chess tournament

The main photo is from this tournament. Nottingham 1936, was a 15-player round robin chess tournament held August 10–28 at the University of Nottingham. It was one of the strongest of all time.Dr. J. Hannak wrote in his 1959 biography of Emanuel Lasker that “when it comes to awarding the plum for ‘the greatest chess tournament ever’, in 1936, the Nottingham Tournament was certainly just that”. W. H. Watts in the Introduction to the tournament book called Nottingham 1936 “the most important chess event the world has so far seen”. It is one of the very few tournaments in chess history to include five past, present, or future world champions (Lasker, José Raúl Capablanca, Alekhine, Euwe and Botvinnik).A number of other prominent players, such as Reuben Fine, Samuel Reshevsky and Salo Flohr, were in the tournament. According to the unofficial Chessmetrics ratings, the tournament was (as of March 2005) one of only five tournaments in history that had the top eight players in the world playing, and was (in terms of the leading players playing) the third strongest in history. All of the top twelve players on Chessmetrics’ August 1936 rating list competed in the tournament except for numbers nine and ten (Andor Lilienthal and Paul Keres).
The event is also notable for being Lasker’s last major event, and for Botvinnik achieving the first Soviet success outside the Soviet Union.

chess_nottingham_1936

1 . 42nd Chess Olympiad – Baku 2016

With so many Grandmasters, with all top rated players and with more than 1500 selected top players from every country around the globe any Chess Olympiad is a candidate to our selection for the strongest chess tournament that has ever been played in chess history. We choose the last Olympiad held in Baku, Azerbaijan 2016 as the strongest tournament ever!

Open 1st, gold medalist(s) United States
2nd, silver medalist(s) Ukraine
3rd, bronze medalist(s) Russia
Women 1st, gold medalist(s) China
2nd, silver medalist(s) Poland
3rd, bronze medalist(s) Ukraine

1 Comment

  1. john calvin says:

    my favorite all time master kiba rubinstein the WIZARD of end game !!

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