Corus chess tournament

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. It was called the Hoogovens tournament until 1999 after which the Dutch steel and aluminium producer Koninklijke Hoogovens merged with British Steel to form the Corus Group on 6 October 1999. From 1938 to 1967, the tournament took place in Beverwijk. After the purchase of Corus by Tata Steel, the future sponsorship of the tournament remains in question.

While it is true that very strong chess players compete in the prestigious tournament, 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 and Veselin Topalov. In fact, of the "Classical" world chess champions since World War II, only the names of Vassily Smyslov and Bobby Fischer are missing. In 2001, nine of the top ten players in the world participated.

Viswanathan Anand is the only player to have won five titles of the Hoogovens/Corus chess tournament in its long history, though three of these were shared wins. Anand also holds the record of most consecutive games played at this tournament without a loss (70 — from 1998–2004). Max Euwe, Lajos Portisch and Viktor Korchnoi won Corus four times each.

Tournament History

Hoogovens Beverwijk

The early tournaments were very small, starting with groups of four in 1938, and entry restricted to Dutch players.The first five tournaments continued this way, with the contest held annually early in January.In 1943 and 1944 the tournament field was doubled in size to eight players.No tournament was held in 1945 due to World War II.The first international tournament was held in 1946. The main tournament field was expanded to ten, with invitations to Alberic O'Kelly de Galway (Belgium) and Gösta Stoltz (Sweden) along with a Dutch contingent of eight.The tournament field remained at ten until 1953 when it was increased to twelve, and an international women's tournament was also held.In 1954 the tournament field was returned to ten players, but the strength of the competitions increased.The field was greatly enlarged to 18 in 1963, and although reduced to 16 in 1964 the event had become the strongest international chess tournament in the world harv|Golombek|1977|p=143.

The 1946 tournament was one of the first European international chess tournaments after World War II.Food shortages were still a problem in Europe, so the post-tournament banquet featured pea soup, inexpensive fare of the common people.In subsequent years pea soup has been served as the first course of the concluding banquet, a tradition continued when the tournament was moved from Beverwijk to Wijk aan Zee harv|Damsky|Sugden|2005|p=164.

Winners of the top group:
*1938 - Philip Bakker
*1939 - Nicolaas Cortlever
*1940 - Max Euwe
*1941 - Arthur Wijnans
*1942 - Max Euwe
*1943 - Arnold van den Hoek
*1944 - Theo van Scheltinga
*1945 - no tournament
*1946 - Alberic O'Kelly de Galway
*1947 - Theo van Scheltinga
*1948 - Lodewijk Prins
*1949 - Savielly Tartakower
*1950 - Jan Hein Donner
*1951 - Herman Pilnik
*1952 - Max Euwe
*1953 - Nicolas Rossolimo
*1954 - Hans Bouwmeester and Vasja Pirc
*1955 - Bora Milic
*1956 - Gideon Stahlberg
*1957 - Aleksandar Matanović
*1958 - Max Euwe and Jan Hein Donner
*1959 - Friðrik Ólafsson
*1960 - Bent Larsen and Tigran Petrosian
*1961 - Bent Larsen and Borislav Ivkov
*1962 - Petar Trifunović
*1963 - Jan Hein Donner
*1964 - Paul Keres and Iivo Nei
*1965 - Lajos Portisch and Efim Geller
*1966 - Lev Polugaevsky
*1967 - Boris Spassky

Hoogovens Wijk aan Zee

The tournament was moved to the Dutch seaside town Wijk aan Zee in 1968.In this period chess players often called the tournament Wijk aan Zee.Winners of the Grandmaster A group since 1968 have been:
*1968 - Viktor Korchnoi
*1969 - Mikhail Botvinnik and Efim Geller
*1970 - Mark Taimanov
*1971 - Viktor Korchnoi
*1972 - Lajos Portisch
*1973 - Mikhail Tal
*1974 - Walter Browne
*1975 - Lajos Portisch
*1976 - Ljubomir Ljubojevic and Friðrik Ólafsson
*1977 - Genna Sosonko and Efim Geller
*1978 - Lajos Portisch
*1979 - Lev Polugaevsky
*1980 - Walter Browne and Yasser Seirawan
*1981 - Genna Sosonko and Jan Timman
*1982 - John Nunn and Yuri Balashov
*1983 - Ulf Andersson
*1984 - Alexander Beliavsky and Viktor Korchnoi
*1985 - Jan Timman
*1986 - Nigel Short
*1987 - Nigel Short and Viktor Korchnoi
*1988 - Anatoly Karpov
*1989 - Viswanathan Anand, Predrag Nikolić, Zoltan Ribli and Gyula Sax
*1990 - John Nunn
*1991 - John Nunn
*1992 - Boris Gelfand and Valery Salov
*1993 - Anatoly Karpov
*1994 - Predrag Nikolić
*1995 - Alexey Dreev
*1996 - Vassily Ivanchuk
*1997 - Valery Salov
*1998 - Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanathan Anand
*1999 - Garry Kasparov
*2000 - Garry Kasparov
*2001 - Garry Kasparov

Corus tournament

*2002 - Evgeny Bareev
*2003 - Viswanathan Anand
*2004 - Viswanathan Anand
*2005 - Péter Lékó
*2006 - Veselin Topalov and Viswanathan Anand
*2007 - Levon Aronian, Teimour Radjabov and Veselin Topalov
*2008 - Levon Aronian and Magnus Carlsen

Complete Results

1999

Crosstable from [http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/twic223#3 TWIC 223] :

:

2007

In 2007, the finals positions were: [http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/twic638.html]

:

2008 tournament

The 2008 Corus Chess Tournament took place in the De Moriaan Community Centre in Wijk aan Zee. The format of each of the three Grandmaster groups remained a 14 player single round robin. The participants in group A included eight of the world's top ten players (country, October 2007 rating and rank in brackets): Viswanathan Anand (India, 2801, 1), Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukraine, 2787, 2), Vladimir Kramnik (Russia, 2785, 3), Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria, 2769, 4), Peter Leko (Hungary, 2755, 5=), Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbaijan, 2752, 7), Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan, 2742, 8) and Levon Aronian (Armenia, 2741, 9). The remaining players are Boris Gelfand (Israel, 2736, 11), Michael Adams (England, 2729, 13), Magnus Carlsen (Norway, 2714, 16=), Judit Polgar (Hungary, 2708, 20), Pavel Eljanov (Ukraine, 2691, 26) and Loek van Wely (Netherlands, 2679, 31). The average rating of 2742 made it a Category 20 tournament. The only top ten players not participating were Alexander Morozevich (Russia, 2755, 5=) and Alexei Shirov (Spain, 2739, 10).

The tournament was won by Levon Aronian and Magnus Carlsen (both scoring 8 out of 13).

Grandmaster group B was won by Sergei Movsesian of Slovakia with 9.5 points, and group C by Italy's Fabio Caruana with 10, two points ahead of his nearest rival. The Honorary group, a new category consisting of four former A group champions playing a double round robin, was won by Ljubomir Ljubojevic with 4 points out of 6, ahead of Jan Timman, Viktor Korchnoi and Lajos Portisch.

ee also

* List of strong chess tournaments

References

*citation
last=Damsky | first=Yakov
last2=Sugden | first2=John
year=2005 | title=The Batsford Book of Chess Records
publisher=Batsford
isbn=0-7134-8946-4
page=164
*citation | last=Golombek | first=Harry | author-link=Harry Golombek | year=1977 | title=Golombek's Encyclopedia of Chess | publisher=Batsford | isbn=0-517-53146-1 | contribution=Hoogoven Chess Tournament | page=143

External links

* [http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=+%09+chess+++ajedrez+++Corus+++Schach++%C3%A9checs++Scacchi++Schaken++%D0%A8%D0%B0%D1%85+&search=Search20 videos of chess,games of Corus chess tournament ,2007.]
* [http://www.coruschess.com/ Corus chess tournament official website]
* [http://perso.orange.fr/eric.delaire/Tournois/Wijk.htm List of all winners 1938-2007, and full cross-tables from 1952 to 2007]
* [http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=4161 List of forthcoming chess tournaments]