Two recent genome-wide association studies reported significant associations of genetic variants at 1q22, 10q23 and 20p13 with gastric cancer (GC) risk in Chinese populations. However, these findings have not been confirmed in other independent studies. Here, we performed an independent case-control study in a Chinese population by genotyping three loci (rs4072037A>G at 1q22, rs2274223A>G at 10q23 and rs13042395C>T at 20p13) in 1681 GC cases and 1858 controls. We found that rs4072037 at 1q22 and rs2274223 at 10q23 were significantly associated with risk of GC with per allele odds ratio (OR) of 0.72 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.63-0.81; P = 2.98 × 10(-7)] and 1.42 (95% CI: 1.27-1.58; P = 9.68 × 10(-10)), respectively. The association was more prominent for rs2274223 in female (OR = 1.86, 95% CI: 1.49-2.32) and gastric cardia adenocarcinoma (GCA) (OR = 1.71, 95% CI: 1.49-1.95). Furthermore, we combined the two single-nucleotide polymorphisms to evaluate the joint effect and found that the GC risk significantly increased with the number of risk allele increasing with a trend P value of 6.66 × 10(-16), and individuals with four risk alleles had a 3.28-fold (95% CI: 1.75-6.13) risk of GC compared with those having no risk alleles. However, no significant association was detected between rs13042395 at 20p13 and GC risk (OR = 1.04, 95% CI: 0.94-1.15; P = 0.452). In conclusion, our results indicate that genetic variants at 1q22 and 10q23 but not 20p13 may serve as candidate markers for GC susceptibility in the Chinese population.