Grand Slam Chess Association

The Grand Slam Chess Association is a series of annual chess tournaments. As of March 2011, active members of the Grand Slam Chess Association include:

• Pearl Spring chess tournament, held in October in Nanjing, China
• Tata Steel Chess Tournament (formerly the Corus chess tournament), usually in January in a small town called Wijk aan Zee, North Holland, Netherlands
• Bazna Kings Tournament, held in June in Romania

The winner of each tournament automatically qualifies to reach the Grand Slam Masters Final, which is held in September in Bilbao, Spain.

These tournaments were formerly members of the Grand Slam Chess Association, but as of March 2011 are defunct:

• Linares International Chess Tournament, around the end of February, in Linares, Jaén province, Andalusia, Spain; not held since 2010
• M-Tel Masters, usually in May, in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria; not held since 2009

For the Bilbao Chess Masters Final 2010, the qualifiers were Magnus Carlsen (winner of the 2009 Pearl Spring, 2010 Corus and 2010 Bazna King tournaments) and Veselin Topalov (winner of 2010 Linares). Because the M-Tel Masters was cancelled in 2010 due to the World Chess Championship 2010, the winner of the World Chess Championship, Viswanathan Anand was named an automatic qualifier. After Topalov withdrew from the final, the remaining two places were decided during a preliminary tournament in China in early September involving Vladimir Kramnik, Levon Aronian (the highest two rated players not having already qualified for the final), Alexei Shirov (nominee of host nation Spain) and Wang Hao (nominee of host nation China). Shirov and Kramnik qualified for the final. The final was the strongest tournament (by rating) in chess history, and it was won by Kramnik, followed by Anand, Carlsen and Shirov.

For the 2011 Grand Slam final, the qualifiers to date are Carlsen (winner of 2010 Pearl Spring), Hikaru Nakamura (winner of 2011 Tata Steel), Sergey Karjakin (second of 2011 Bazna Kings, Carlsen is winner), World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand and Levon Aronian (the highest rated player not having already qualified for the final). The remaining place has yet to be determined. Karjakin didn't participate. Ivanchuk replaced him. Vallejo Pons, host player, was the last.