The World Cup Starts Tomorrow
The World Cup is a qualifier, with three spots up for grabs in the next Candidates event. (The Candidates, in turn, is the final qualifier to see who will face either Viswanathan Anand or Boris Gelfand for the world championship.) As usual, the World Cup is a 128-player knockout event held in Khanty-Mansyisk, Russia.
It will take 7 rounds in all to whittle the field from 128 players to a winner (though with three qualifying places the most important final match will be between the semi-final losers, not the winners), and the first 6 rounds will have the following format: Day 1: classical game; Day 2: classical game; Day 3: (increasingly) rapid tiebreaks (if necessary). If a player finishes without needing tiebreaks, he (or Judit Polgar or Hou Yifan) will have that third day off; otherwise, the only way to get a rest day is by getting eliminated or making through the first six rounds. There will be a day off before the final match, which will run to four classical games (if necessary) followed if need be by rapid tiebreaks.
As you would expect, this event is strong. Seriously strong. 32 players at or over 2700 strong, with six more players (including Alexander Morozevich) over 2690 strong. The top 10 seeds are:
1. Sergey Karjakin (2788)
2. Vassily Ivanchuk (2768)
3. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (2765)
4. Ruslan Ponomariov (2764)
5. Vugar Gashimov (2760)
6. Alexander Grischuk (2746)
7. Teimour Radjabov (2744)
8. Gata Kamsky (2741)
9. Peter Svidler (2739)
10. Dmitry Jakovenko (2736)
For American readers, here's our contingent:
8. Gata Kamsky (2741)
51. Alexander Onischuk (2675)
86. Yuri Shulman (2617)
103. Ray Robson (2560)
111. Sam Shankland (2539)
112. Alexander Ivanov (2538)
(Recall that Nakamura could have played but decided not to.)
I don't see the pairing chart on the event site (though it's easy enough to ascertain the pairings from this page as #1 will play #128, #2 plays #127, etc.), so I'll refer you here for that information.
And the winner will be? How about the top three?