Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen is a Norwegian chess grandmaster. He is a five-time World Chess Champion, the reigning five-time World Rapid Chess Champion, the reigning seven-time World Blitz Chess Champion, and the reigning Chess World Cup Champion. He has held the No. 1 position in the FIDE world chess rankings since 1 July 2011 and trails only Garry Kasparov in time spent as the highest-rated player in the world. His peak rating of 2882 is the highest in history. He also holds the record for the longest unbeaten streak at the elite level in classical chess.
Teimour Boris oghlu Radjabov is an Azerbaijani chess grandmaster.
Christopher Hikaru Nakamura is an American chess grandmaster, streamer, YouTube content creator, five-time U.S. Chess Champion, and the reigning World Fischer Random Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he earned his grandmaster title at the age of 15, the youngest American at the time to do so. With a peak rating of 2816, Nakamura is the tenth-highest-rated player in history.
Levon Grigori Aronian is an Armenian-American chess grandmaster. A chess prodigy, he earned the title of grandmaster in 2000, at age 17. He is a former world rapid and blitz champion and has held the No. 2 position in the March 2014 FIDE world chess rankings with a rating of 2830, becoming the fourth highest-rated player in history.
Wesley Barbossa So is a Filipino and American chess grandmaster and three-time U.S. Chess Champion. He is also a three-time Philippine Chess Champion. On the March 2017 FIDE rating list, he was ranked number two in the world and had an Elo rating of 2822, making him the fifth-highest-rated player in history.
Fabiano Luigi Caruana is an Italian and American chess grandmaster who is the reigning three-time United States Chess Champion. With a peak rating of 2844, Caruana is the third-highest-rated player in history.
Anish Kumar Giri is a Dutch chess grandmaster. A chess prodigy, he completed the requirements for the grandmaster title in 2009 at the age of 14 years, 7 months and 2 days. Giri is a five-time Dutch champion and won the Corus Chess B Group in 2010. He has represented the Netherlands at six Chess Olympiads. He has also won major international tournaments, including the 2012 Reggio Emilia tournament, 2017 Reykjavik Open, 2023 Tata Steel Chess, and shared 1st place in the 2015 London Chess Classic. In 2019 he won clear first at the Third Edition of the Shenzhen Masters, deemed by some to be his first supertournament victory.
The Bilbao Chess Masters Final is an annual chess tournament which between 2008-12 brought together the strongest players from the previous year's "Grand Slam" events. Series organisers Grand Slam Chess Association (GSCA) became defunct in 2012 due to the demise of the Grand Slam hosts and scheduling problems but the Bilbao Masters continued as an annual invitational event until 2016.
Nijat Azad oglu Abasov is an Azerbaijani chess grandmaster. In September 2023, he reached his all-time-highest rating of 2677 and was ranked as No. 3 in Azerbaijan and No. 59 in the world.
Wei Yi is a Chinese chess player and grandmaster.
Nihal Sarin is an Indian chess grandmaster and chess prodigy. In 2018, he passed the Elo rating of 2600 at 14 years old, which at the time made him the third youngest player in history to do so.
Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa is an Indian chess grandmaster. A chess prodigy, he became an international master at the age of 10, the youngest at the time to do so, and a grandmaster at the age of 12, the second-youngest at the time to do so. Praggnanandhaa, alongside his elder sister R Vaishali, became the first brother and sister to hold the Grandmaster title.
Andrey Evgenyevich Esipenko is a Russian chess grandmaster. He won the European U10 Chess Championship in 2012, and both the European U16 and World U16 Chess Championship in 2017.
Alireza Firouzja is an Iranian and French chess grandmaster. Firouzja is the youngest player to have surpassed a FIDE rating of 2800, beating the previous record set by Magnus Carlsen by more than five months.
The Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2019 was the 81st edition of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament. It was held in Wijk aan Zee, Alkmaar and Leiden from 11–27 January 2019. The tournament was won by Magnus Carlsen.
The Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2022 is the 84th edition of the annual chess tournament held in Wijk aan Zee. It was held from 14 January to 30 January 2022. No visitors were allowed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands. Norwegian GM Magnus Carlsen scored 9.5/13 in the Masters section with 6 wins and 7 draws, thereby winning the tournament for the eighth time in his career. Indian GM Arjun Erigaisi dominated the Challengers section, winning with a score of 10.5/13, with an impressive 8 wins and 5 draws. World No. 2 Alireza Firouzja failed to reach an agreement with the organizers for compensation for an incident in 2021, and as such didn't participate.
The Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2023 was the 85th edition of the annual chess tournament held in Wijk aan Zee. It was held from 13 January to 29 January 2023. The field of 14 players in the Masters section included the numbers one and two of the FIDE world rankings at the time, Magnus Carlsen and Ding Liren, as well as five teenage grandmasters. Iran’s Parham Maghsoodloo was a late substitute for Poland’s Jan-Krzysztof Duda. For the first time since 2015, Carlsen lost two classical games in a row: first in round 4 against Dutch grandmaster and five-times runner-up Anish Giri, and then in round 5 against the Uzbek teenager Nodirbek Abdusattorov. Going into the last round Abdusattorov had a half point lead over Giri, but he lost his game against Dutch 2021 winner Jorden van Foreest, while Giri defeated Richárd Rapport, making Giri the tournament's winner. Germany's Alexander Donchenko won the Challengers section, securing an invitation to the 2024 Tata Steel Masters section. Both the Masters and Challengers sections were eligible for the 2023 FIDE Circuit.
The Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2018 was the 80th edition of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament. It was held in Wijk aan Zee from 13 to 28 January 2018. The tournament was won by Magnus Carlsen.
The Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2017 was the 79th edition of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament. It was held in Wijk aan Zee from 14 to 29 January 2017.
The Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2016 was the 78th edition of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament. It was held in Wijk aan Zee from 16 to 31 January 2016.
Magnus Carlsen (Masters)
Wei Yi (Challengers)
Magnus Carlsen (Norway)
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France)
Anish Giri (Netherlands)
Wesley So (United States)
Ding Liren (China)
Vasyl Ivanchuk (Ukraine)
Fabiano Caruana (Italy)
Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan)
Radosław Wojtaszek (Poland)
Levon Aronian (Armenia)
Ivan Šarić (Croatia)
Baadur Jobava (Georgia)
GM David Navara (Czech Republic)
GM Salem Saleh (United Arab Emirates)
GM Vladimir Potkin (Russia)
GM Bart Michiels (Belgium)
IM Ari Dale (Australia)
