2015 in chess explained

Events in chess during the year 2015:

2015 tournaments

This is a list of significant 2015 chess tournaments:

Tournament	Dates	Players	Winner	Runner-up	Third
	12–27 Jan	14
	2–9 Feb	8
	13–19 Feb	6			Vladimir Kramnik
FIDE Grand Prix 2014–15 Tbilisi	14–28 Feb	12			Teimour Radjabov
	16 Mar – 7 Apr	64			Dronavalli Harika Pia Cramling
	27 Mar – 7 Apr	68			Ivan Bukavshin
Shamkir Chess 2015	16–26 Apr	10
FIDE Grand Prix 2014–15 Khanty-Mansiysk	14–26 May	12			Fabiano Caruana
Norway Chess 2015	15–26 Jun	10
	27 Jun – 5 Jul	8
	20–30 Jul	6	Maxime Vachier-Lagrave^[1]		Michael Adams
	22 Aug – 3 Sept	10			Hikaru Nakamura
	10 Sep – 5 Oct	128			Anish Giri Pavel Eljanov
Millionaire Chess 2015	8–12 Oct				Yu Yangyi
	10–12 Oct	158			Teimour Radjabov
	13–14 Oct	188
	25 Oct – 1 Nov	4			Viswanathan Anand Ding Liren
	4–13 Dec	10			Maxime Vachier-Lagrave
	20–29 Dec	132

Key dates

• 26 May: Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura clinch the top two positions in the FIDE Grand Prix 2014–15, securing their spots in the 2016 Candidates Tournament
• 5 October: Sergey Karjakin and Peter Svidler place first and second, respectively, in the Chess World Cup 2015, securing two spots in the 2016 Candidates Tournament
• 12 October: Magnus Carlsen defends the World Chess Rapid Championship title
• 14 October: Alexander Grischuck wins the World Chess Blitz Championship title

FIDE world rankings

The FIDE World Rankings in December was^[2]

Rank	Player	Rating
1	Magnus Carlsen	2834
2	Veselin Topalov	2803
3–4	Viswanathan Anand	2796
3–4	Vladimir Kramnik	2796
5	Hikaru Nakamura	2793
6	Levon Aronian	2788
7	Fabiano Caruana	2787
8	Anish Giri	2784
9	Ding Liren	2776
10	Wesley So	2775
11	Maxime Vachier-Lagrave	2773
12	Sergey Karjakin	2766
13	Pavel Eljanov	2763
14	Peter Svidler	2751
15	Li Chao	2750
16	Shakhriyar Mamedyarov	2748
17	Alexander Grischuk	2747
18	Evgeny Tomashevsky	2744
19	Pentala Harikrishna	2743
20–21	Michael Adams	2737
20–21	Dmitry Jakovenko	2737

Notes and References

1. Web site: Winners 2015 Biel International Chess Festival . . July 2015 . Biel International Chess Festival . 2 November 2015 . https://web.archive.org/web/20151025060204/http://www.bielchessfestival.ch/en/home . 25 October 2015 . dead . dmy-all .
2. Web site: FIDE: Top 100 Players.