Tata Steel Chess Tournament

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. 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 ("hoogoven" is Dutch for "blast furnace", literally "high oven"). From 1938 to 1967, the tournament took place in Beverwijk. Since the purchase of Corus by Tata Steel, the tournament is now called the Tata Steel Chess Tournament. The series has continued to be numbered sequentially from its beginnings and hence, the 2011 event was referred to as the 73rd Tata Steel Chess Tournament on the official website.

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, 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 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.