BADEN-BADEN GRENKE CLASSIC
Black Forest spa town in Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Germany which organized two outstanding tournaments. In 1870 (18.07-04.08) Baden-Baden was the first International tournament organized in Germany and the first to be interrupted by war (Franco-Prussian war). The first prize was 3,000 francs. This tournament was the first to introduce chess clocks, but the players had the option of using hour-glasses. All the great players were there except George Mackenzie. Adolf Anderssen was declared the winner with 11/16 followed by Wilheim Steinitz 10½, Joseph Blackburne and Gustav Neumann 10. There were 10 players in all.
In 1925 (16.04-13.05), the event was the first International tournament in Germany after World War I. Without Emanuel Lasker and Raoul Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine was the winner with 16 points ahead of Akiba Rubinstein 14½ and Friedrich Sämisch and Efim Bogoljubow 13½. A minor tournament won by Spielmann was also organized in 1913. Since 1980 an annual chess festival was organized.
The main winners have included: 1981 Anthony Miles and Zoltan Ribli; 1982 Slobodan Martinovic; 1987 Lubomir Ftacnik; 1988 Vitaly Tsheskovsky; 1989 Nikolay Ninov; 1990 Alexander Goldin; 1991 Tamaz Georgadze; 1992 Anatoly Karpov; 1993 Philipp Schlosser & Stefan Kindermann; 1995 (Rapid Chess) Anatoly Karpov, 1997 Viktor Korchnoi.
Since 2013, GRENKE Leasing became the main sponsor of the tournament.
The winners were: 2013 Viswanathan Anand; 2014 Arkadij Naiditsch; 2015 Magnus Carlsen; 2016 Matthias Bluebaum; 2017 Levon Aronian; 2018 Fabiano Caruana; 2019 Magnus Carlsen.
In 2006, the club of OSC Baden-Baden became one of the best teams in Bundesliga winning the Bundesliga 2005/6, 2006/7, 2007/8, 2008/2009, 2009/2010, 2010/2011 and 2011/2012 championships with Vishy Anand, Peter Svidler, Alexy Shirov, Etienne Bacrot, Magnus Carlsen and many other top players.
