The World Senior Chess Championship is an annual chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 tournament established in 1991 by FIDE, the World Chess Federation.
Participants must have reached 60 years old on 1 January of the year of the event. The World Senior Women Chess Championship is a separate event which requires the participants to be women 50 years old or older.

The championship is organized as an eleven-round Swiss system tournament

Swiss system tournament

A Swiss-system tournament is a commonly used type of tournament where players or teams need to be paired to face each other for several rounds of competition. This type of tournament was first used in a Zurich chess tournament in 1895, hence the name "Swiss system". The Swiss system is used when...

.
It is an open tournament, and each FIDE member federation may send as many players as desired. A separate women's tournament is held if there are enough participants (at least 10 women from four different FIDE zones). The men's winner is awarded the title of Grandmaster if he did not already have it, the women's winner receives the Woman Grandmaster title if she did not already have it.

The 8th World Senior Championship was held 9–23 November 1998 in Grieskirchen

Grieskirchen

Grieskirchen is a town in Austria. It is capital of the Grieskirchen district of Upper Austria, in the Trattnachtal valley. As of 2001, it has 4.807 inhabitants.-References:...

, Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

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Vladimir Bagirov

Vladimir Bagirov

Vladimir Bagirov was a Soviet-Latvian grandmaster of chess, chess author, and trainer. He played in ten USSR Championships, with his best result being fourth place in his debut in 1960. Bagirov was World Senior Champion in 1998...

 (Latvia) won the 200-player men's section on tie-break

Tie-breaking in Swiss system tournaments

Tie-break systems are used in chess Swiss system tournaments to break ties between players who have the same total number of points after the last round. If the players are still tied after one tie-break system is used, another system is used, and so on, until the tie is broken...

 over Wolfgang Uhlmann

Wolfgang Uhlmann

Wolfgang Uhlmann is a prominent German International Grandmaster of chess. Despite being a dedicated professional chess player, and undoubtedly the GDR's most successful ever, he has also had a career in accountancy.-Chess career:...

 (Germany), both with 8.5/11.
Ten players tied a half point behind with 8.0/11, including former World Championship Candidates

Candidates Tournament

The Candidates Tournament is a chess tournament organized by the world chess federation FIDE since 1950, as the final contest to determine the challenger for the World Chess Championship...

 Mark Taimanov

Mark Taimanov

Mark Evgenievich Taimanov is a leading Soviet and Russian chess player and concert pianist.-Chess:He was awarded the International Grandmaster title in 1952 and played in the Candidates Tournament in Zurich in 1953, where he tied for eighth place. From 1946 to 1956, he was among the world's top...

 and Borislav Ivkov

Borislav Ivkov

Borislav Ivkov is a Serbian chess Grandmaster. He was the first ever World Junior Champion in 1951. He won the Yugoslav Championship in 1958 , 1963 and 1972. He was a World championship candidate in 1965, and played in four more Interzonal tournaments, in 1967, 1970, 1973, and 1979...

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WGM Tamar Khmiadashvili (Georgia) won the 24-player women's section outright with 9.5 points.

The 13th World Senior Championship was held 16–29 November 2003 in Bad Zwischenahn

Bad Zwischenahn

Bad Zwischenahn is a village and a municipality in the low-lying Ammerland district, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the lake Zwischenahner Meer, approx...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

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IM Yuri Shabanov

Yuri Shabanov

Yuri Fedorovich Shabanov was a chess Grandmaster. He won the World Senior Chess Championship in 2003 and 2004.Shabanov twice won European Senior Teams championships, in 2002 with Schachak Moskau and in 2006 with Dostoinstvo Moskau.-External links:...

 (Russia) won the 272-player men's section 9.0/11 on tie-break over GM Jānis Klovāns

Janis Klovans

Jānis Klovāns was a Latvian chess Grandmaster. He was a career officer in the Soviet Army.Jānis Klovāns won the Latvian Championship nine times , and participated in several Soviet Championships...

 (Latvia) and IM Vladimir Bukal (Croatia).
WGM Tamar Khmiadashvili (Georgia) won the 22-player women's section 7.5/9 on tie-break over WGM Marta Litinskaya-Shul

Marta Litinskaya-Shul

Marta Litynska is a Ukrainian chess master.Born Marta Shul, she was Soviet Women’s Champion in 1972, and Sub-Champion in 1971, 1973, and 1974. She played in 2nd Interzonal Tournament at Menorca 1973 where tied for 2nd–5th places...

 (Ukraine).

The 14th World Senior Championship was held 24 October–5 November 2004 in Halle (Saale)

Halle, Saxony-Anhalt

Halle is the largest city in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is also called Halle an der Saale in order to distinguish it from the town of Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia...

, Germany.
IM Yuri Shabanov (Russia) defended his championship, winning the 215-player men's section on a tie-break with five players scoring 8.5/11.
GM Elena Fatalibekova (Russia) won the 19-player women's section outright with 8.0/9.

The 16th World Senior Chess Championship was held 11–23 September 2006 in Arvier

Arvier

Arvier is a town and comune in the Aosta Valley region of north-western Italy.- Geography :-Wine:The local wine, Enfer d'Arvier, had its own DOC designation before being subsumed into the Valle d'Aosta DOC...

, Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

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Former World Chess Championship

World Chess Championship

The World Chess Championship is played to determine the World Champion in the board game chess. Men and women of any age are eligible to contest this title....

 challenger and top seed GM Viktor Korchnoi

Viktor Korchnoi

Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi ; pronounced in the original Russian as "karch NOY"; Ви́ктор Льво́вич Корчно́й, born March 23, 1931 is a professional chess player, author and currently the oldest active grandmaster on the tournament circuit...

 (Switzerland) won the 126-player men's section 9.0/11.
Competing in his first Senior's Championship at age 75, Korchnoi won his first four games, drew in the fifth round with Jānis Klovāns, and then won the next three.
Entering the ninth round with a full point lead, Korchnoi drew his final three games to take the € 3000 gold medal.
WGM Ludmila Saunina (Russia), age 54, won the 14-player women's section by a full point, 8.5/11, to earn € 700.

Winners

#	Year	City	Men's Winner	Women's Winner
1	1991
2	1992
3	1993
4	1994
5	1995
6	1996
7	1997
8	1998
9	1999
10	2000
11	2001
12	2002
13	2003
14	2004
15	2005
16	2006
17	2007
18	2008		and
19	2009
20	2010