The World Chess Candidates that takes place on March 10 – 30, 2016, is a dramatic tournament which determines the challenger for the World Chess Championship.
Eight of the world’s top grandmasters come to Moscow to play in the tournament that will be contested as a double round-robin over 14 games. The winner will play a match for the title against reigning World Champion Magnus Carlsen next November in the US.
The eight participants in the Candidaes tournament will be Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria and Anish Giri of the Netherlands, who qualified based on their ratings; Viswanathan Anand of India, the runner-up of the last championship match in 2014; Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana of the United States, who were the top two finishers in the last Grand Prix; Sergey Karjakin and Peter Svidler of Russia, the winner and runner-up, respectively in the last World Cup; and Levon Aronian of Armenia, a wild card choice.
The field includes six of the top 10 players in the current rankings — all of the players are among the the top 17. The prize fund will be at least 420,000 euros, or about $460,000 at the current exchange rate.