GRONINGEN
City of North of Netherlands which hosted the first strongest post-WWII tournament. The tournament named the Staunton Memorial was supposed to determinate a possible challenger to play the World Champion Alexander Alekhine. The tournament showed the begin of the Soviet supremacy in international chess. Mikhail Botvinnik won the event with 14½ ahead of Max Euwe 14, Vasily Smyslov 12½, Laszlo Szabo and Miguel Najdorf 12.
From 1963 until 1987 Groningen hosted the annually the European U20 Championship, the PCA World Championship Qualification Tournament in 1993, the World Championship Tournament in 1997 and regularly chess festivals.
The winners of top events were: 1963 Rob Zuidema, 1964 Rob Hartoch, 1965 Robert Hubner, 1966 Hans Ree, 1967 Mikhail Steinberg, 1968 Anatoly Karpov, 1969 Karl Heinz Maeder, 1970 Andras Adorjan, 1971 Zoltan Ribli, 1972 Gyula Sax, 1973 Oleg Romanishin, 1974 Sergey Makarichiev, 1975 John Nunn, 1976 Alexander Kochiev, 1977 Mark Diesen, 1978 Shaun Taulbut, 1979 John Van der Wiel, 1980 Alexander Chernin, 1981 Ralf Akesson, 1982 Curt Hansen, 1983 Jan Ehlvest, 1984 Valery Salov, 1985 Ferdinand Hellers, 1986 Alexander Khalifman, 1992 Jeroen Piket, 1993 Vishy Anand, 1994 Arthur Jussupow, 1996 Nigel Short, 1997 WC Vishy Anand, 1997 Open Alexander Graf, 2001 Sipke Ernst, 2002 Friso Nijboer, 2003 Friso Nijboer, 2004 Yuriy Kuzubov, 2005 Sipke Ernst, 2006 Sipke Ernst, 2007 Stelios Halkias, 2008 Merab Gagunashvili, 2009 Illya Nyzhnyk, 2010 Dejan Bojkov, 2011 Alexander Kovchan, 2012 Zaven Andriasian, Alexander Kovchan and Sipke Ernst, 2013 Zaven Andriasian, 2014 Alexander Donchenko, 2015 Jorden Van Foreest, 2016 Jinshi Bai, 2017 Benjamin Bok, 2018 Ottomar Ladva, 2019 Vrolijk Liam.
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