25 January 2019

FIDE Announces Dates and Qualifiers for 2019 Grand Prix Series

Four knock-out events to be held.


FIDE and World Chess announce the 2019 Grand Prix Series dates. There will be four exciting knock-out events: 

1st leg: May 16th – 30th; 
2nd leg: July 11th – 25th; 
3rd leg: November 4th – 18th; 
4th leg: December 10th – 24th. 

Each of the top 20 players qualified by rating will take part in 3 out of 4 knock-out tournaments. Each Grand Prix leg will feature 16 participants, including one wild card nominee by the organizers for each event (there will be 4 wild cards, one for each Grand Prix). 

Two winners will qualify for the 2020 Candidates Tournament. Total prize for each event will be EUR 130,000. In addition, EUR 280,000 Prize Fund to be awarded based on the best cumulative score in the entire Series. 

FIDE publishes the list of qualified players and 12 reserves. Players will have 7 days to sign the contract after FIDE publishes the contract as well as Rules and Regulations and the list of cities which will host the Series.

PLAYERS QUALIFIED    AVERAGE RATING
   
1. Magnus Carlsen - 2840,17
2. Fabiano Caruana - 2816,67
3. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov - 2812,17
4. Ding Liren - 2795,75
5. Vladimir Kramnik - 2786,33
6. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave - 2783,83
7. Anish Giri - 2779,75
8. Wesley So - 2778,92
9. Levon Aronian - 2773,08
10. Viswanathan Anand - 2770,58
11. Alexander Grischuk - 2767,92
12. Hikaru Nakamura - 2767,83
13. Sergey Karjakin - 2766,08
14. Yu Yangyi - 2761,42
15. Ian Nepomniachtchi - 2758
16. Peter Svidler - 2751,75
17. Teimour Radjabov - 2751,75
18. Veselin Topalov - 2744,58
19. Dmitry Jakovenko - 2739,75
20. David Navara - 2737,5

   
RESERVES
   
1. Radoslaw Wojtaszek - 2734,5
2. Wei Yi - 2733,92
3. Jan-Krzysztof Duda - 2733
4. Pentala Harikrishna - 2732,92
5. Nikita Vitiugov - 2726,92
6. Le Quang Liem - 2723,67
7. Bu Xiangzhi - 2719,67
8. Richard Rapport - 2719,33
9. Li Chao b - 2716,25
10. Wang Hao - 2715,33
11. Vladimir Fedoseev - 2713,33
12. Arkadij Naiditsch - 2713,17

The Grand Prix Series will be featured on Eurosport.

Information on FIDE.com