The Grand Slam Chess Association announced on Sunday that the world famous tournament in Linares, Spain will be held again this year, after it was cancelled in 2011. The Association also communicated the dates for the 5th Grand Slam Masters Final, and requested FIDE to "avoid any conflicts with our schedules".

The following press release was distributed on Sunday to the journalists who were present in the press room in Wijk aan Zee for the Tata Steel tournament:

The information about the future of the Tata Steel tournament is not different from what was expressed by CEO and Managing Director of Tata Steel Europe Dr Karl-Ulrich Köhler, during the opening ceremony in Wijk aan Zee two weeks ago. The tournament will be held for at least one more year, and considering the fact that it's the 75th jubilee edition, that's no surprise. At a press conference on Sunday afternoon, tournament director Jeroen van den Berg once again said that he didn't know anything yet about the year after.

It's great news to see that the Linares tournament wasn't taken off the calendar for good. It's one of the longest running top tournaments with a wonderful history. The connection with Mexico is not new: in the past there was a cooperation with the city of Morelia, for three years. Apparently a similar concept, where two cities share the organization and finances, will be repeated.

The very same set-up will again be the case for the Grand Slam final as well: the second half will, as always, take place in Bilbao but the other city (in previous years Shanghai and Sao Paulo) is yet to be announced.

And so the calendar for 2012 is, like last year, completey out of balance. Only two elite events (Wijk aan Zee and Bazna) and one more big tournament (the European Championship) are scheduled for the first half of the year, and many more for the second half, such as Biel, Dortmund, the Olympiad, the European Club Cup, the European Team Championship, the Tal Memorial, the London Chess Classic and... the FIDE Candidates tournament. It's understandable that the Grand Slam Chess Association urges FIDE to avoid an overlap with one of their events, but it won't be easy!

Update: On Tuesday morning, January 31st the GSCA distributed an updated version of the press release via email, in which it is confirmed that Levon Aronian qualified for the Grand Slam Masters Final by winning the Tata Steel tournament. Besides, we forgot to mention that because of their planned match (which we mentioned in our Tata round 11 report), Levon Aronian and Vladimir Kramnik will probably not be able to play Linares/Mexico.