25 July 2017

FIDE Publishes Final List of Participants of the World Cup 2017

The tournament will be held in Tbilisi.

The World Cup will take place in Tbilisi, Georgia, from September 2 (player's technical meeting) to September 27 (tie-breaks/closing ceremony). On July 24, FIDE published the list of 128 participants, including Magnus Carlsen, who had signed their players’ contracts. The winner and the runner up of the World Cup 2017 will qualify to the Candidates Tournament 2018.

The tournament is a knock-out event. There shall be 6 rounds of matches comprising 2 games per round, with the winners progressing to the next round, plus the final 7th round comprising of 4 games. 

If the scores are level after the regular games, after a new drawing of colors, two tie-break games with 25 minutes for each player with an addition of 10 seconds shall be played. If the scores are still level after the games, then, after a new drawing of colors, a match of 2 games shall be played to determine the winner with a time control of 10 minutes plus 10 seconds increment after each move. In case of a level score, another match of 2 games shall be played with a time control of 5 minutes plus 3 seconds increment after each move. If still there is no winner, one sudden-death game will be played. 

For the first time in history, the reigning World Champion is going to play in the World Cup, which came as a surprise to the organizers. The nominees of FIDE were announced as well. 

Russia is represented by Sergey Karjakin, Peter Svidler (both - World Cup 2015), Mikhail Antipov (Junior World Champion2015), Vladimir Kramnik, Alexander Grischuk, Dmitry Andreikin, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Evgeny Tomashevsky (all - rating), Ernesto Inarkiev, Aleksey Goganov, Daniil Dubov, Aleksey Dreev, Anton Demchenko, Maxim Matlakov, Vladimir Fedoseev, Alexander Motylev, Boris Grachev, and Vladislav Artemiev (all - European Championships 2016 & 2017). 

The pairings according to the current ratings will be published later. 

List of participants