language_of_work_or_name corus 2008 chess tournament
Ljubomir Ljubojevi ( ___MASK25___ Cyrillic :   ) is a ___MASK25___ Grandmaster of chess . Sergei Movsesian ( born 3 November 1978 in Tbilisi ) is an ___MASK33___ chess Grandmaster who played for the ___MASK7___ Republic for most of his career . Later he represented Slovakia which offered him citizenship . On December 30 , 2010 Movsesian started to represent his ancestral country of Armenia . He was a member of the gold medal - winning ___MASK33___ team at the 2011 World Team Chess Championship in Ningbo . Wijk aan Zee is a small town on the coast of the North Sea in the municipality of Beverwijk in the province of North Holland of the Netherlands . The prestigious Tata Steel Chess Tournament ( formerly called the Corus chess tournament or the Hoogovens tournament ) takes place there every year . Nigel David Short ( born 1 June 1965 ) is an ___MASK2___ chess grandmaster , chess columnist , chess coach and chess commentator . Short earned the Grandmaster title at the age of 19 , and was ranked third in the world by FIDE from January 1988 to July 1989 . In 1993 he became the first ___MASK2___ player to play a World Chess Championship match , when he qualified to play Garry Kasparov in the World Chess Championship 1993 in London ( Kasparov won , 12 . 5 to 7 . 5 ). As of January 2017 , he is the oldest player ranked among FIDE ' s top 100 players and is ranked # 65 . The inaugural ___MASK22___ Chess Championship was held in the city of Gyr in 1906 . Initially , there was no governing body responsible for its organisation , until the formation of the ___MASK22___ Chess Federation . The HCF first appeared in 1911 , but failed to establish itself properly until 1923 . Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov ( born May 23 , 1951 ) is a ___MASK60___ chess grandmaster and former World Champion . He was the official world champion from 1975 to 1985 when he was defeated by Garry Kasparov . He played three matches against Kasparov for the title from 1986 to 1990 , before becoming FIDE World Champion once again after Kasparov broke away from FIDE in 1993 . He held the title until 1999 , when he resigned his title in protest against FIDE ' s new world championship rules . For his decades - long standing among the world ' s elite , Karpov is considered by many to be one of the greatest players of all time . The ___MASK7___ Republic , also known by the short name Czechia , is a nation state in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west , Austria to the south , Slovakia to the east and Poland to the northeast . The ___MASK7___ Republic covers an area of with mostly temperate continental climate and oceanic climate . It is a unitary parliamentary republic , has 10 . 5 million inhabitants and the capital and largest city is Prague , with over 1 . 2 million residents . The ___MASK7___ Republic includes the historical territories of Bohemia , Moravia , and ___MASK7___ Silesia . Lajos Portisch ( born 4 April 1937 ) is a ___MASK22___ chess Grandmaster , whose positional style earned him the nickname , the " ___MASK22___ Botvinnik ". One of the strongest non - Soviet players from the early 1960s into the late 1980s , he participated in twelve consecutive Interzonals from 1962 through 1993 , qualifying for the World Chess Championship Candidates ' cycle a total of eight times ( 1965 , 1968 , 1974 , 1977 , 1980 , 1983 , 1985 , and 1988 ). Portisch set several all - time records in Chess Olympiads . In ___MASK22___ Chess Championships , he either shared the title or won it outright a total of eight times ( 1958 , 1959 , 1961 , 1964 , 1965 , 1971 , 1975 , and 1981 ). He won many strong international tournaments during his career . In 2004 , Portisch was awarded the ' Nemzet Sportoloja ', Hungary ' s highest national sports achievement award . 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 ___MASK81___ sponsor Koninklijke Hoogovens merged with British Steel plc to form the Corus Group , which became Tata Steel Europe in 2007 . Étienne Bacrot ( born 22 January 1983 in Lille ) is a ___MASK59___ chess grandmaster and former chess prodigy . Garry Kimovich Kasparov (; born Garik Kimovich Weinstein , 13 April 1963 ) is a ___MASK60___ chess grandmaster , former World Chess Champion , writer , and political activist , whom many consider to be the greatest chess player of all time . From 1986 until his retirement in 2005 , Kasparov was ranked world No . 1 for 225 out of 228 months . His peak rating of 2851 , achieved in 1999 , was the highest recorded until being surpassed by Magnus Carlsen in 2013 . Kasparov also holds records for consecutive professional tournament victories ( 15 ) and Chess Oscars ( 11 ). Fabiano Luigi Caruana ( born July 30 , 1992 ) is an ___MASK72___ - American chess grandmaster , former chess prodigy , and currently the second - highest ranked player in the world . He played for the US until 2005 , when he switched to Italy , and he subsequently switched back to the US in 2015 . He is the current US champion . The Netherlands is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands . It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three island territories in the Caribbean . The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east , Belgium to the south , and the North Sea to the northwest , sharing maritime borders with Belgium , the United Kingdom , and Germany . The largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam , Rotterdam , The Hague and Utrecht . Amsterdam is the country ' s capital , while The Hague holds the ___MASK81___ seat of government and parliament . The name " Holland " is used to refer informally to the whole of the country of the Netherlands . Lille is a city in northern France , in ___MASK59___ Flanders . On the Deûle River , near France ' s border with Belgium , it is the capital of the Hauts - de - France region and the prefecture of the Nord department . Armenia ( tr . " Hayastan "), officially the Republic of Armenia ( tr . " Hayastani Hanrapetut  yun "), is a sovereign state in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia . Located in Western Asia on the " ___MASK33___ Highlands ", it is bordered by Turkey to the west , Russia and Georgia to the north and Azerbaijan to the east , and Iran and Azerbaijan ' s exclave of Nakhchivan to the south . Dimitri Reinderman ( born August 12 , 1972 in Hoorn ) is a ___MASK81___ chess Grandmaster with an Elo rating of 2542 . He shares the 3rd position with Sipke Ernst on the rating list of the KNSB , The Royal Netherlands Chess Association . Reinderman is a vegetarian . Tbilisi , commonly known by its former name Tiflis , and often mispronounced as " Tiblisi ", is the capital and the largest city of Georgia , lying on the banks of the Kura River with a population of roughly 1 . 5 million inhabitants . Founded in the 5th century by the monarch of Georgia ' s ancient precursor the Kingdom of Iberia , Tbilisi has since served , with intermissions , as the capital of various ___MASK40___ kingdoms and republics . Under ___MASK60___ rule , from 1801 to 1917 Tiflis was the seat of the Imperial Viceroy governing both sides of the entire Caucasus . Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen ( born 30 November 1990 ) is a ___MASK11___ chess grandmaster , and the current World Chess Champion . Carlsen was a child chess prodigy who became a chess grandmaster in 2004 , at the age of 13 years and 148 days . This made him the third - youngest grandmaster in history . Carlsen ' s play continued to improve and by 2007 he was holding his own against the world ' s best grandmasters in tournaments . Parimarjan Negi ( born 9 February 1993 ) is a chess grandmaster ( GM ) from India , a former Asian and Indian champion . He achieved the GM title at the age of 13 years and 142 days ( 13 years , 4 months , and 20 days ) in 2006 , becoming the second youngest chess grandmaster ever , second only to Sergey Karjakin . North Holland (, ___MASK56___ : " Noard - Holland ") is a province in the northwest of the Netherlands . It is situated on the North Sea , north of South Holland and Utrecht , and west of Friesland and Flevoland . As of 2015 , it has a population of 2 , 762 , 163 and a total area of . Levon Grigori Aronian ( born 6 October 1982 ) is an ___MASK33___ chess Grandmaster . On the March 2014 FIDE rating list , he was ranked number two in the world and had an Elo rating of 2830 , making him the fourth highest rated player in history . The Fédération Internationale des Échecs or World Chess Federation is an international organization that connects the various national chess federations around the world and acts as the governing body of international chess competition . It is usually referred to as FIDE , its ___MASK59___ acronym . The ___MASK81___ Chess Championship was officially established in 1909 , although unofficial champions stretch back to the 1870s . The North Sea is a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean located between Great Britain , Scandinavia , Germany , the Netherlands , Belgium , and France . An epeiric ( or " shelf ") sea on the European continental shelf , it connects to the ocean through the ___MASK2___ Channel in the south and the Norwegian Sea in the north . It is more than long and wide , with an area of around . Slovakia , officially the ___MASK45___ Republic , is a landlocked country in Central Europe . It is bordered by the ___MASK7___ Republic and Austria to the west , Poland to the north , Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south . Slovakia ' s territory spans about and is mostly mountainous . The population is over 5 million and comprises mostly ethnic Slovaks . The capital and largest city is Bratislava . The official language is ___MASK45___ , a member of the Slavic language family . The 2008 Corus chess tournament was a Grandmaster level chess tournament held in the de Moriaan Community Centre , Wijk aan Zee , Netherlands from 12 January to 28 January 2008 . It consisted of three main Grandmaster groups and the Honorary group , comprising former A group champions ; groups A , B and C were won respectively by Levon Aronian ( on tiebreak from Magnus Carlsen , after both finished with 8 points ) , Sergei Movsesian ( 9 points , one point ahead of Nigel Short and Étienne Bacrot ) and Fabiano Caruana ( 10 points , two ahead of Dimitri Reinderman and Parimarjan Negi ) . The Honorary group was won by Ljubomir Ljubojevi ( 4 points ) ahead of Viktor Korchnoi , Jan Timman ( both 3 ) and Lajos Portisch ( 2 ) . Jan Timman ( born 14 December 1951 ) is a ___MASK81___ chess Grandmaster who was one of the world ' s leading players from the late 1970s to the early 1990s . At the peak of his career he was considered to be the best non - Soviet player and was known as " The Best of the West ". He has won the ___MASK81___ Chess Championship nine times and has been a Candidate for the World Championship several times . He lost the title match of the 1993 FIDE World Championship against Anatoly Karpov . Sergey Alexandrovich Karjakin ( born 12 January 1990 ) is a ___MASK60___ ( formerly representing Ukraine ) chess grandmaster . He is a former chess prodigy and holds the record for the world ' s youngest grandmaster , having qualified for this title at the age of 12 years and 7 months .