World Chess Championship 2016
The World Chess Championship 2016 is a planned match between reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen and a challenger, to determine the 2016 World Chess Champion. It is planned to be held under the auspices of FIDE, the World Chess Federation.[1]
During the closing ceremony of the 2014 Championship, the FIDE president said the match would be held in the United States.[2] He reiterated this in October at the Chess World Cup 2015, saying that the date and place were already final, it would occur in October 2016 in the USA, with five or six sponsors involved, and many cities (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago) offering themselves as a venue.[3] Other information has placed the event in November 2016, with Chicago replaced by San Francisco as a possible venue (see next paragraph).
FIDE's commercial partner Agon, reported to the September 2015 FIDE Executive Board as a special annex.[4] Here they demonstrate four major sponsors for 2016, Goldman Sachs Investment Banking, Audi, E.ON, and Isklar Water. Regarding the World Championship specifically, the report says "Agon has secured a prize fund (EUR2,000,000) and is working on developing sponsorship contracts. We’ll inform the Board and, if approved, announce the city and venue in November of 2015, exactly a year before the championship. We are looking at New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. We are also working with ESPN and Sky Sports to make sure the Championship is on TV."
Candidates Tournament
The Candidates Tournament is traditionally considered to be the most important part of the FIDE World Chess Championship cycle.[5] It will be held 10–30 March 2016 in Moscow, Russia, with FIDE, the Russian Chess Federation, and FIDE's commercial partner Agon as the official organizers.[6] The official partner (sponsor) will be the Tashir Group, owned by Armenian-born real estate magnate Samvel Karapetyan.[6] The President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan has been invited to open the Tournament.[5]
The winner of this 8-player Candidates Tournament will be the challenger for the 2016 World Chess Championship against Magnus Carlsen.[7]
Qualifiers
There are five different qualification paths to the Candidates Tournament.[7] These are: Runner-up of the World Chess Championship 2014 match, the top two finishers in the Chess World Cup 2015, the top two finishers in the FIDE Grand Prix 2014–15, next two highest rated players (average FIDE rating on the 12 monthly lists from January to December 2015, with at least 30 games played) who played in Chess World Cup 2015 or FIDE Grand Prix 2014–15, and organizing committee's wild card.
Qualification path | Player | FIDE rating (Nov. 2015)[8] |
---|---|---|
Runner-up of the World Chess Championship 2014 match | Viswanathan Anand | 2803 |
the top two finishers in the Chess World Cup 2015 | Sergey Karjakin | 2766 |
Peter Svidler | 2745 | |
The top two finishers in the FIDE Grand Prix 2014–15 | Fabiano Caruana | 2787 |
Hikaru Nakamura | 2793 | |
Next two highest rated players who played in Chess World Cup 2015 or FIDE Grand Prix 2014–15 | Veselin Topalov [note 1] | 2803 |
Anish Giri[note 1] | 2778 | |
Organizing committee's wild card (FIDE rating in July 2015 at least 2725) | Levon Aronian[6] | 2781 |
Note: the ratings given above are not used for anything (such as seeding), but are completely informational in nature. Svidler and Karjakin, similarly Nakamura and Caruana, will be paired together in rounds 1 and 8, to avoid country-based conflicts in late rounds.[7]
Replacements
Should any player withdraw from the tournament, the first replacement would be Dmitry Jakovenko, who finished third in the FIDE Grand Prix. After this, players will be selected in order of average rating in 2015 as in the table below.[7] This is not just a theoretical possibility, as Veselin Topalov has been outspoken in his complaints, and upon hearing of Moscow as the location, told Chess.com that he was "waiting for the contract before taking my final decision if to play or not".[10] His manager Silvio Danailov gave similar comments to a Russian/Bulgarian news source.[11][12]
Rank | Player | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Live | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Veselin Topalov | 2800 | 2800 | 2798 | 2798 | 2798 | 2798 | 2816 | 2816 | 2816 | 2813 | 2803 | 2803 | 33659 |
2 | Anish Giri | 2784 | 2797 | 2790 | 2790 | 2776 | 2773 | 2791 | 2793 | 2793 | 2798 | 2778 | 2784 | 33447 |
3 | Vladimir Kramnik | 2783 | 2783 | 2783 | 2783 | 2777 | 2783 | 2783 | 2777 | 2777 | 2777 | 2796 | 2796 | 33398 |
4 | Alexander Grischuk | 2810 | 2810 | 2794 | 2794 | 2780 | 2781 | 2771 | 2771 | 2771 | 2774 | 2750 | 2747 | 33353 |
5 | Wesley So | 2762 | 2788 | 2788 | 2788 | 2778 | 2778 | 2780 | 2779 | 2773 | 2760 | 2767 | 2775 | 33316 |
References
- ^ "FIDE calendar 2016". FIDE. Retrieved 27 November 2014.
- ^ "World Championship Sochi: Closing Ceremony". Chessbase.com. 27 November 2014. Retrieved 27 November 2014.
- ^ "Chess-News interview with Kirsan Ilyumzhinov". 4 October 2015.
- ^ Annex 54, FIDE 2015 Executive Board
- ^ a b FIDE News
- ^ a b c https://www.fide.com/component/content/article/1-fide-news/9179-2016-fide-world-chess-candidates-tournament.html
- ^ a b c d "Rules & regulations for the Candidates Tournament of the FIDE World Championship cycle 2014–2016" (PDF). FIDE. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
- ^ FIDE rating
- ^ 2016 World Chess Candidates tournament to be played out in March
- ^ Moscow to host 2016 Candidates
- ^ Bulgarian grandmaster unhappy with choice of Moscow for the Candidates Tournament (Russian)
- ^ Danailov Says Choosing Moscow for the Candidates is "Outrageous"