Bilbao Chess Masters Final 2008. Glass-enclosed playing venue on the Plaza Nueva, Bilbao.
The Bilbao Chess Masters Final (previously called the Grand Slam Chess Final) is an annual chess tournament which between 2008 and 2012 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.
Negotiations between the organisers of major tournaments M-Tel Masters, Tata Steel Chess Tournament (under the name Corus) and Linares began in March 2006, seeking to create a cycle of tournaments to raise the popularity of chess and attract increased sponsorship for major events.[1] Several rounds of talks took place over the next 14 months.
The GSCA was established on 17 January 2007 and the first edition of the series for 2008 announced in May, with Mexico City added to the list and Bilbao confirmed as Masters Final hosts.[2] Due to problems raising funding for the tournament, it was announced on 16 May 2008 that Mexico City was cancelled.[3]
On 16 March 2009, the members of the GSCA Presidential Board was published, confirming the addition of Pearl Spring in Nanjing, China as Grand Slam hosts as well as interest from San Luis, Argentina and London.[4] The M-Tel Masters was held for the last time during this series.
During the 2010 series, marking the last edition of Linares due to financial problems and the cancellation of M-Tel Masters due to the World Chess Championship, held in Sofia that year, it was agreed that Kings Tournament held in Medias, Romania would join the 2011 edition.[5]
At the end of the 2012 edition of Tata Steel the rest of the 2012 series was confirmed and announced that the 2011 winners of Tal Memorial and London Chess Classic qualified for the 2012 Bilbao Final.[6] This would be the last Grand Slam cycle, later editions composed of invitees by the Bilbao Masters organising committee.
An ongoing problem was conflicting schedules between Grand Slam hosts and FIDE. For the 2013 series, invitees Carlsen and Anand declined spots in the Bilbao final due to their preparations for the World Championship.[7]
Format and venue
The tournament is a double round robin featuring four to six players. The tournament regulations use the Sofia Chess Rules, which forbids agreed draws before 30 moves, and the "Bilbao" scoring system of 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loss (though for ratings purposes the traditional scoring method is used).
The venue for the tournament has traditionally been the city of Bilbao in Spain. In year 2011 and 2012 a second venue was added as São Paulo in Brazil with one of the round-robins in each city. A soundproofed and air-conditioned glass "cube" was constructed to house the tournament, allowing spectators to watch closely the players inside.
Topalov convincingly won the tournament with 17 points, Carlsen beating Aronian to second place. Had Topalov lost to Ivanchuk and Carlsen defeated Anand in the last round, there would have been a tiebreak rapid match.[9] Anand finished in last place ahead of his World Championship defence against Vladimir Kramnik.
The second Final consisted of Sergey Karjakin, the winner of 2009 Corus, Alexander Grischuk, winner of Linares, Alexei Shirov, winner in M-Tel Masters, and Aronian, second place at Pearl Spring, replacing Topalov who declined the invitation.
Aronian emerged as the clear winner, winning the event with one round to spare.[11]
The third edition[13] featured four players and took place in the Alhóndiga Bilbao. It was a category 22 tournament, the highest rated tournament in history.[14] Qualifiers for the Final were Carlsen (winner of Corus, Bazna Kings and Pearl Springs events) and Anand who was seeded through due to the cancellation of M-Tel Masters that year. Topalov had qualified as winner of Linares 2010 but withdrew from the Final.
A tournament was held in Shanghai, China consisting of Kramnik, Aronian, Shirov and Wang Hao in order to fill the two spots. Alexei Shirov and Vladimir Kramnik - by defeating Aronian in an armageddon tie-break game - qualified. Kramnik then went on to win the Masters Final.
In contrast to Grand Slam Masters Finals in the last years, the organizers decided to return to a six-player double round robin without a special qualification tournament. The first half of the fourth edition was played in São Paulo from September 25 to October 1, and the second in Bilbao from October 5 to October 11.
The players invited to the Grand Slam Masters Final 2011 were Anand as second-place at Pearl Spring and the Tata Steel, Carlsen, as winner of Bazna and Pearl Spring, Hikaru Nakamura as winner of Tata Steel and Aronian as highest rated player not qualified, third in the FIDE ratings. Kramnik, the winner of the 2010 Final, and Karjakin, second at Bazna - declined to play and were replaced by Ivanchuk and local player Francisco Vallejo Pons.[17]
Carlsen dominated the Bilbao half of the 4th Final Masters and finished level with Ivanchuk who played so well in the first half. Carlsen won the event after defeating Ivanchuk in a blitz playoff 1.5-0.5.
The format was a six-player double round robin. The first half of the fifth edition was played in São Paulo from September 24 to September 29, and the second in Bilbao from October 8 to October 13.
After Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana tied for first place a tiebreak match took place, which Carlsen won 2–0.
The seventh Grand Slam Chess Masters was held from 14 to 20 September in Bilbao as a double round robin with four players. Viswanathan Anand emerged as the winner.[23]
The eighth Masters tournament was held from 26 October to 1 November in Bilbao as a double round robin with four players. Wesley So won the tournament after beating Anish Giri in a tiebreak match (blitz playoff).
The ninth Bilbao Masters Final was held on 13–23 July as a six-player double round-robin with Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Anish Giri, Sergey Karjakin, Wesley So and Wei Yi taking part.[26] As in previous Bilbao Masters tournaments, the scoring was 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, and 0 points for a loss.
