Santa Clara International Chess Meeting

The Intel Santa Clara International Chess Meeting is an annually held elite chess tournament traditionally held in winter. Santa Clara is an invite-only event usually played in a single-elimination format. However it took on a double round-robin format from 2000 to 2004. It is one of the strongest chess tournaments in the world and was first held in 1994.

The title sponsor is Intel.

Format
The tournament was initially held as a standard single-elimination tournament from 1994 to 1999. In 2000, the format was changed to a double round-robin tournament with the winner of the previous tournament being seeded into a best-of-5 final to challenge for the title. This format was used until 2005 when it was changed back to a single-elimination tournament with the winner of the previous tournament being seeded into the quarterfinals or semi-finals with a best-of-8 final. With the exception of the 2011 and 2012 tournaments when the format for the finals was changed to first-to-3½-wins and first-to-4-wins-with-draws-not-counted respectively, this format has been used ever since.

Tournament history

 * 1994 – ESP Alexei Shirov
 * 1995 – UKR Vassily Ivanchuk
 * 1996 – RUS Anatoly Karpov
 * 1997 – RUS Vladimir Kramnik
 * 1998 – IND Viswanathan Anand
 * 1999 – RUS Alexander Morozevich
 * 2000 – ENG Michael Adams
 * 2001 – HUN Peter Leko
 * 2002 – RUS Garry Kasparov
 * 2003 – RUS Garry Kasparov
 * 2004 – IND Viswanathan Anand
 * 2005 – RUS Vladimir Kramnik
 * 2006 – IND Viswanathan Anand
 * 2007 – BUL Veselin Topalov
 * 2008 – RUS Alexander Morozevich
 * 2009 – IND Viswanathan Anand
 * 2010 – RUS Vladimir Kramnik
 * 2011 – IND Viswanathan Anand
 * 2012 – IND Viswanathan Anand
 * 2013 – ARM Levon Aronian
 * 2014 – RUS Alexander Grischuk
 * 2015 – NOR Magnus Carlsen
 * 2016 – USA Fabiano Caruana
 * 2017 – RUS Sergey Karjakin
 * 2018 – AZE Shakhriyar Mamedyarov
 * 2019 – CHN Ding Liren
 * 2021 – Ian Nepomniachtchi