Vishy Anand

- Five-time world champion. and nine times winner of the Magistral de León.
- Grand Master / INDIA.
- World champion after defeating Boris Gelfand in Moscow 2012 and Veselin Topalov in Sofia (Bulgaria) 2010. Previously he had been champion in Teheran 2001, in Mexico 2007 and in Bonn 2008 beating Vladimir Kramnik.
- Winner in 9 editions of our tournament, a record that nobody has managed to overcome.

He is one of the great stars of chess of all time. Known as “the fast one from Chennai", his hometown, because of the speed of his game. His favorite phrase is; "If I think a lot I'm wrong."

“The quiet man” in the chess world, excellent person, kind with all and always ready to tend to the fans and press.

He is one of the greatest natural talents, if not the best, in the history of chess.

Disciplined and hardworking, he devotes more than 6 hours a day to his mental and physical readiness for chess, he is a real professional. Current world number 2 and world runner-up (defeated by Carlsen in Sochi-Russia). He usually says: "In Leon I feel like at home, and on top of that, I also win here!”.

He admits that Leon is one of his favorite tournaments for he has won here on 9 occasions, the last one in 2016, where he defeated the Chinese prodigy Wey Yi.

In this edition he will face the American superstar Wesley So, who is the current number 6 of the world at age 23, and bright "young talents” such as Rapport and León native Jaime Santos.