Brussels, Oct 4: The newly crowned World Champion Viswanathan Anand has been given the top seed position at the forthcoming Corus Chess tournament starting at Wijk aan Zee in Netherlands from January 11, 2008.

The 17-day event will be the Indian Grandmaster's first Grand Slam championship after becoming the World Champion in Mexico recently.

However, two of the current top ten players -- Russian GM Alexander Morozevich and Spaniard Alexei Shirov -- will be out of action in the championship, which concludes on January 27.

Participants (In order of their current ratings): Vishwanathan Anand, Vassily Ivanchuk, Vladimir Kramnik, Veselin Topalov, Peter Leko, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Teymour Radjabov, Levon Aronian, Boris Gelfand, Michael Adams, Magnus Carlsen, Judit Polgar, Pavel Eljanov and Loek van Wely.

UNI