1.Hastings 1895 - Pillsbury, Chigorin, Lasker, Steinitz, Tarrasch ... the whole top twelve were there.

2.Linares 1992 - World champion Gary Kasparov dominated completely making up for his recent failure at Reggio Emilia 1991/2 where he came 3rd after Viswanathan Anand and Boris Gelfand, and his poor showing at Linares the previous year where he had to cede first to Vassily Ivanchuk. An indication of his fine form was his first round victory over second place Jan Timman, a 25 move miniature where Kasparov sacrifices a knight for a mating attack. Ivanchuk, who had also recently won the Reykjavik World Cup (with Karpov), shared second with Timman ahead of Anatoly Karpov, Anand, Valery Salov and Gelfand. Spanish businessman Luis Rentero has been financing the Linares tournaments for over two decades now, and since about 1990, these tournaments have usually been among the strongest in any given year.

3.Vienna 1882 - The top nine in the world along with nine other strong players descended on Wilhelm Steinitz's old stomping ground to test their mettle against the master himself. James Mason and George Mackenzie came across from the U.S. and Simon Winawer and Mikhail Chigorin appeared from Russia making this one of the most representative international tournaments yet. Only world #10 France's Samuel Rosenthal was absent. Steinitz had not played a serious game since demolishing Blackburne +7 in a match in 1876, but he proved to be in fine form. Mackenzie, however, brought Steinitz's twenty five game winning streak to an end in the third round by managing to find a perpetual check just as Steinitz's attack was closing in. In the end, Steinitz and Winawer tied for first, played a two game playoff but split the prize after scoring one win each.

4.London 1883 - Again the top nine were all here but once again #10 was missing, this time, Alexander Wittek. Johannes Zukertort was a protege of the great Adolf Anderssen who had been brought to England by Steinitz's enemies. Up until this tournament, Steinitz had much the better of things defeating Zukertort decisively in a match, but here Zukertort finally found his form, and won the tournament. Note: the scoring system for this tournament was a bit strange. Draws were to be replayed, and if the players drew again, a third time. A player's score was given as a total out of 26 with initial draws not counting. Thus finishing order was 1.Zukertort 2.Steinitz 3.Blackburne 4.Chigorin even though by traditional methods, Blackburne had more points than Steinitz.

5.Nottingham 1936 won by Jose Raul Capablanca and Mikhail Botvinnik ahead of Reuben Fine, Samuel Reshevsky, world champion Max Euwe and Alexander Alekhine.

6.Zurich/Neuhausen Candidates 1953 won by Smyslov ahead of Bronstein, Reshevsky, Keres, Petrosian, Najdorf, Geller, Kotov, Taimanov et al.

9.St.Petersburg 1914 won by Emanuel Lasker ahead of Jose Raul Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, Siegbert Tarrasch, Frank Marshall, Akiba Rubinstein and Aron Nimzowitsch. Famous for the way world champion Lasker came from behind to steal first place from the new favorite, young Capablanca. Lasker won a famous game against Capablanca from the white side of the "drawish" Ruy Lopez Exchange variation.

10.Linares 1994 won by Anatoly Karpov ahead of Gary Kasparov, Alexei Shirov, Evgeni Bareev, Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanathan Anand. Before this event, Kasparov suggested that winner could be considered the world tournament champion, but perhaps spurred on by this, Karpov put in the performance of his career scoring +9=4 to finish two and a half points ahead of second place Kasparov and Shirov.

11.AVRO Amsterdam 1938 won by Paul Keres and Reuben Fine ahead of Mikhail Botvinnik, Max Euwe, Samuel Reshevsky, world champion Alexander Alekhine, Jose Raul Capablanca and Salomon Flohr. Fine established a strong lead in the first half, but lost to Keres in the seventh round and Reshevsky in the ninth, allowing Keres to catch up. The once invincible Capablanca suffered a mild stroke during the tournament which doubtless affected his play. Flohr was hampered by the fact that his native Czechoslovakia had recently been invaded by the Nazis. He eventually emigrated to the Soviet Union.

San Sebastian 1911

After 33 x?, Capablanca does not play the obvious recapture 33 ... x. Instead, Capablanca sets up a mating net using the <Greco mate> pattern with 33 ... f2!.