Our first table lists 12 events that appear on just about everyone's list of top tournaments. These were all played before the Second World War.

Before that terrible war, strong chess tournaments were relatively rare. Some years saw none, and an average year might have two or three top tier events. The end of the war brought two significant changes to world chess which had an impact on the organization of strong events.

The first change was the transfer of political power from the individual world champions to FIDE. Where the World Championship had previously been the property of the reigning World Champion, who had final say over each opponent, FIDE decided that title challengers would henceforth be determined by a system of competition open to all strong players.

The second change was the increasing dominance of the Soviet players in world chess. When the Soviet chess federation joined FIDE just after the end of the war, the chess world was guaranteed to have a steady stream of strong grandmasters available for competitions. The Soviet players were state supported, and although their state kept close check on the privilege to participate in strong events, they had no reason to fear that they would end their professional careers in absolute poverty.

As chess became more popular throughout the world, series of tournaments held regularly in the same locale became more common. The idea had existed before the war, Hastings being the most enduring example, but the series were generally short lived and subject to the whim of a wealthy patron.

If we return to notable post-war tournaments identified by the experts, we find many series of strong tournaments. Our second table lists more than a dozen of these series. The numbers show how many times a locale appears on at least one expert's list, the first year it appears, and the last year. Note that our statistics don't necessarily show the number of times an event was held in that locale; they only count those events which at least one expert has considered notable.

There are other series which don't show on this table. The Hastings series continues, while the Amber Blindfold & Rapid tournaments in Monaco are also popular among chess fans. In future articles on Famous Chess Tournaments, we'll explore some of the different series mentioned in our table.