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FIDE Grand Prix 2017

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The FIDE Grand Prix 2017 will be a series of four chess tournaments that form part of the qualification cycle for the World Chess Championship 2018. The top two finishers will qualify for the 2018 Candidates Tournament.

Contents

Format

There are four tournaments in the cycle; each will consist of 18 players. 24 players will be selected to compete in the tournaments, and each player will compete in three of the four tournaments.

In contrast to the previous editions where players played a full round-robin, each tournament will now be an 18-player, nine-round Swiss system tournament. In each round players will score 1 point for a win, ½ point for a draw and 0 for a loss. Grand Prix points will then be allocated according to each player's standing in the tournament, as shown in the table below.

Players

The Grand Prix consists of 24 players. Two players qualified from being finalists in the World Chess Championship 2016 match; four players qualified from reaching the semifinals of the Chess World Cup 2015, eight players will qualify based on rating; one player will qualify from participation in the Association of Chess Professionals, and finally nine players rated at least 2700 will be nominated by Agon and FIDE.

In an interview with Chessdom (Aug 2016), Zurab Azmaiparashvili (president of the European Chess Union) indicated various plusses and minuses with the new system, particularly that he considered the nine "wild card" entries were less expensive than in previous versions. However, with few details currently available and maybe questions unanswered, he also was unsure of the professionality of Agon's approach.

At the FIDE General Assembly in September, Agon presented Vladimir Kramnik as having Russia as a national sponsor, which if true would be the first time that he has participated in the FIDE Grand Prix.

Any player who declines to participate in the Grand Prix will be replaced by another player who is rated over 2700. Players who held a entry spot but did not enter the Grand Prix were: Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin from the World Chess Championship 2016, Fabiano Caruana, Viswanathan Anand, Veselin Topalov, Vladimir Kramnik, Wesley So from the rating list.

Prize money and Grand Prix points

The total prize money is €130,000 per single Grand Prix, or €520,000 for the total Grand Prix series. This money is allocated based on ranking in each individual tournament.

Additionally, each player who can recruit a sponsor will receive €20,000.

Tie breaks

With the objective of determining qualifiers to play in the Candidates 2018, and in the case that two or more players have equal cumulative points at the top, the following criteria were utilized to decide the overall Series winner and other overall placings:

  1. Number of actual game result points scored in the three tournaments entered.
  2. Number of games played with black.
  3. Number of wins.
  4. Number of black wins.
  5. Drawing of lots.

Schedule

Originally the first event was to take place in Oct 2016, but this has been moved to Nov 2017, with the other dates mostly the same.

Originally the 3rd Grand Prix (now the 2nd) was to conflict with the World Team Chess Championship, but now that event has been moved to July where it instead conflicts with the Grand Chess Tour events and Norway Chess.

Grand Prix standings

Grand Prix points in bold indicate a tournament win. Green indicates qualifiers of the 2018 Candidates Tournament

Replaces:

  • Wei Yi is replaced by Hou Yifan.
  • References

    FIDE Grand Prix 2017 Wikipedia