The World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championship 2012 will take place 1-10 July in Astana, Kazakhstan. A total of 16 prominent Grandmasters will participate for the prize fund of 400 000 USD.
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World Rapid Chess Championship
For the games in the World Rapid Chess Championship each player will have 15 minutes + 10 seconds additional time per move, starting from move 1. The Final Tournament will be played in three days as a single round-robin event, 5 rounds per day (or 15 rounds in three days). Here are the participants in the final.
Live games here – July 5, 6, and 7 at 11:00 CET
Magnus Carlsen, 2837
Teimour Radjabov, 2788
Sergey Karjakin, 2779
Alexander Morozevich, 2770
Vassily Ivanchuk, 2769
Alexander Grischuk, 2763
Veselin Topalov, 2752
Peter Svidler, 2749
Boris Gelfand, 2738
Viktor Bologan, 2732
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, 2726
Alexey Dreev, 2677
Igor Kurnosov, 2663
Vladislav Tkachiev, 2644
Murtas Kazhgaleyev, 2589
Anuar Ismagambetov, 2471
The final tournament consists of 16 players. Three of them qualified from the Semi Finals – Igor Kurnosov, Alexey Dreev and Vladislav Tkachiev.
Tiebreak priorities for 1st place:
a) Results between the players involved;
b) Number of wins;
c) Sonneborn-Berger score;
d) Sudden death game 5’-4’.
Every single name above is of Soviet origin, except for Carlsen! I mean …where is Nakamura, Anand, Caruana or even Dominguez!!?
Nakamura’s tweet: “For everyone who is wondering why I am not in Astana, it is because the organizers gave me late notice. I had already made summer plans.”
Maybe the others (Anand, Aronian, Kramnik … got last minute invites too!
And Fischer. Where the heck is Fischer?
Grind-master Lenya Gristmilli to Anonymous:
The “Regulations for the World Rapid Chess Championship 2012” specify that the Final Tournament will have 16 players, 10 of whom would be automatically invited by virtue of their being among the top ten of the January 2012 rating list. Caruana is 17th on that list. Dominguez Perez is 21st on that list.
Anand, 4th on that list, declined the invitation.
Nakamura, 12th on that list, did not initially receive an invitation, but did receive an invitation after some of the initial receivers of the invitation declined. But Nakamura also declined his invitation.
BTW, it is entirely fair that so many of the players come from countries which were part of the former Soviet Union. In order of ranking on the January 2012 FIDE list, these were the countries that these players are from:
Norway (Carlsen),
Armenia (Aronian),
Russia (Kramnik),
India (Anand),
Azerbaijan (Radjabov),
Bulgaria (Topalov),
Russia (Karjakin),
Ukraine (Ivanchuk),
Russia (Morozevich),
Azerbaijan (Gashimov),
Russia (Grischuk),
USA (Nakamura),
Russia (Svidler),
Azerbaijan (Mamedyarov),
Russia (Tomashevsky),
Israel (Gelfand),
Italy (Caruana),
Russia (Nepomniachtchi),
China (Wang Hao),
USA (Kamsky).