The 2024 Candidates Tournament will be an eight-player
chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...
tournament, held to determine the challenger for the
World Chess Championship 2024
The World Chess Championship 2024 will be a chess match to determine the World Chess Champion. It will be played between the defending champion, Ding Liren of China, and the winner of the Candidates Tournament 2024. It will be a best of 14 games, ...
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, from April 3–22, 2024. The event will be held alongside the Women's Candidates Tournament.
As with every Candidates tournament since
2013
File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fa ...
, it will be a double round-robin tournament.Regulations for the FIDE Candidates Tournament 2024 (PDF) FIDE The winner of the tournament will earn the right to play the
World Chess Championship 2024
The World Chess Championship 2024 will be a chess match to determine the World Chess Champion. It will be played between the defending champion, Ding Liren of China, and the winner of the Candidates Tournament 2024. It will be a best of 14 games, ...
against the current World Chess Champion
Ding Liren
Ding Liren (; born 24 October 1992) is a Chinese chess grandmaster. He is the highest rated Chinese chess player in history and is also a three-time Chinese Chess Champion. He was the winner of the 2019 Grand Chess Tour, beating Maxime Vac ...
.
Qualification
The qualifiers for the Candidates Tournament are:
Participation of Magnus Carlsen
Despite qualifying for the Candidates Tournament by winning the 2023 FIDE World Cup, former World Champion
Magnus Carlsen
Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen (born 30 November 1990) is a Norwegian chess grandmaster who is the reigning five-time World Chess Champion. He is also a three-time World Rapid Chess Champion and five-time World Blitz Chess Champion. Carlsen has h ...
officially decided not to compete in Toronto. He had previously stated his disinclination after reaching the semifinals of the World Cup, stating that "under the current format there is absolutely no chance" he will play the Candidates. In January 2024, after official confirmation of the candidates list, Magnus Carlsen formally confirmed his decision to decline FIDE's invitation to play in the Candidates Tournament by stating "I would say the main reason is that I don't enjoy it. It's as simple as that." As a result,
, who finished fourth at the World Cup, qualified to the Candidates Tournament 2024 as Carlsen's replacement.
FIDE and Grand Chess Tour agreement
In April 2022, before announcing all the qualification methods, FIDE announced that the top two finishers in the 2023 Grand Chess Tour would qualify to the 2024 Candidates Tournament. FIDE promised that more details will follow, but later announced qualification paths excluding the Grand Chess Tour, without providing an explanation for the change. However, the Grand Chess Tour tournaments counted toward the qualifying path of the FIDE Circuit.
FIDE Rating qualifier
The highest rated player in the January 2024 rating list who has not yet qualified for the Candidates or
World Championship
A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game, ...
, and has participated in at least four FIDE Circuit classical events, qualified for the Candidates.
The rating qualifier turned out to be hotly contested. After a poor showing in the 2023 Sinquefield Cup, rating spot front-runner Alireza Firouzja lost nearly thirteen rating points, putting him behind Wesley So in the live ratings. In an attempt to surpass So, the Chartres Chess Club organized three two-game matches between Firouzja and grandmasters
Alexandre Dgebuadze
Alexandre Dgebuadze (born 21 May 1971) is a Georgian-born Belgian chess player who played for Georgia until 2000. He was awarded the title of Grandmaster by FIDE in 2000.
Chess career
He has won the Georgian Chess Championship in 1990, and the ...
(52 years old, rated 2439), Andrei Shchekachev (51 years old, rated 2506), and
Sergey Fedorchuk
Sergey Fedorchuk ( ua, Сергій Федорчук, translit=Serhiy Fedorchuk; born 14 March 1981) is a Ukrainian chess player. He was awarded the title of Grandmaster by FIDE in 2002.
Career
In 1995 Fedorchuk won the European Youth Chess ...
(42 years old, rated 2546). These matches, held in Chartres,
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
, were collectively referred to as "Alireza Firouzja's Race to Candidates". Firouzja needed to win all six games (or win the first five and not play the sixth) to overtake So in the live ratings. He indeed won the first five games after some controversy (such as Shchekachev resigning in a position that turned out to be equal in game 3), but decided to play the sixth game anyway. In what was effectively a must-win game, Firouzja overpushed and landed in a terrible endgame, but with both players in time trouble, Fedorchuk accepted Firouzja's draw offer. The 5.5/6 result still left Firouzja behind So in the live rating list.
The last-minute nature of the event as well as the hand-selecting of opponents drew criticism, including from So, who revealed he turned down similar opportunities because he disagreed with the morality of such events. Shortly after these matches were announced, FIDE affirmed that it had the right to not rate any specific event, and the
United States Chess Federation
The United States Chess Federation (also known as US Chess or USCF) is the governing body for chess competition in the United States and represents the U.S. in FIDE, the World Chess Federation. US Chess administers the official national rating ...
called on FIDE to not rate Firouzja's games. FIDE's response drew criticism from many, including Ian Nepomniachtchi, who pointed out that
Ding Liren
Ding Liren (; born 24 October 1992) is a Chinese chess grandmaster. He is the highest rated Chinese chess player in history and is also a three-time Chinese Chess Champion. He was the winner of the 2019 Grand Chess Tour, beating Maxime Vac ...
had also played last-minute games to qualify for the
Candidates Tournament 2022
The 2022 Candidates Tournament was an eight-player chess tournament to decide the challenger for the World Chess Championship 2023. The tournament took place at the Palacio de Santoña in Madrid, Spain, from June 16 to July 5, 2022,
On December 25, FIDE announced new rules, effective immediately, requiring events with at least one player rated over 2700 (or at least one woman player rated over 2500) to be registered at least one month in advance; however, the rule would not be applied retroactively for Alireza Firouzja's Race to Candidates tournament. Such requirement could be waived with the approval of the FIDE president or QC Chairman. That same day, Alireza Firouzja's matches (as well as another match in Chartres in which Firouzja did not play) were removed from FIDE's website.
Having fallen short, Firouzja withdrew from the World Rapid and Blitz championship to participate in the Open de Rouen tournament, which was a minor Swiss-system tournament with a top prize of €700. Firouzja won all 7 games, including a win against former world championship challenger
Gata Kamsky
Gata Kamsky ( tt-Cyrl, Гата Камский, italics=no; russian: Гата Камский; born June 2, 1974) is a Soviet-born American chess grandmaster, and a five-time U.S. champion.
Kamsky reached the final of the FIDE World Chess Cha ...
. This gained Firouzja enough rating to surpass So on the January 2024 rating list even if the Chartres event was not rated, which turned out to be the case. Firouzja was officially confirmed as the rating qualifier in the January ratings list.
Organization
The tournament is an eight-player, double round-robin tournament, meaning there are 14 rounds with each player facing the others twice: once with the black pieces and once with the white pieces. The tournament winner will qualify to play
Ding Liren
Ding Liren (; born 24 October 1992) is a Chinese chess grandmaster. He is the highest rated Chinese chess player in history and is also a three-time Chinese Chess Champion. He was the winner of the 2019 Grand Chess Tour, beating Maxime Vac ...
for the World Championship in 2024.
Players from the same federation are required to play each other in the first rounds of each half to avoid collusion. The players affected in the 2024 Candidates are R Praggnanandhaa, Vidit Gujrathi and Gukesh D from India, and Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura from the United States. The former three will face one another in rounds 1–3 and 8–10, while the latter two will face each other in rounds 1 and 8.
Regulations
The time control is 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, then 30 minutes for the rest of the game, plus a 30-second increment per move starting from move 41. Players get 1 point for a win, ½ point for a draw and 0 points for a loss.
Tiebreaks for the first place are addressed as follows:
* Players would play two
rapid chess
Fast chess, also known as Speed chess, is a type of chess in which each player is given less time to consider their moves than normal tournament time controls allow. Fast chess is subdivided, by decreasing time controls, into rapid chess, bli ...
games at 15 minutes plus 10 seconds per move. If a three- to six-way tie had occurred, a single round-robin would be played. If seven or eight players had been tied, a single round-robin would be played with a time limit of 10 minutes plus 5 seconds per move.
* If any players had still been tied for first after the rapid chess games, they would play two
blitz chess
Fast chess, also known as Speed chess, is a type of chess in which each player is given less time to consider their moves than normal tournament time controls allow. Fast chess is subdivided, by decreasing time controls, into rapid chess, blit ...
games at 3 minutes plus 2 seconds per move. In the case of more than two players being tied, a single round-robin would be played.
* If any players were still tied for first after these blitz chess games, the remaining players would play a knock-out blitz tournament at the same time control. In each mini-match of the proposed knock-out tournament, the first player to win a game would win the mini-match.
Ties for places other than first will be broken by, in order: (1)
Sonneborn–Berger score
The Sonneborn–Berger score (or the Neustadtl score) is a scoring system often used to break ties in chess tournaments. It is computed by summing the conventional score of each defeated opponent, and half the conventional score of each drawn opp ...
; (2) total number of wins; (3) head-to-head score among tied players; (4) drawing of lots.
The prize money is
€
The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and unilaterally adopted by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists ...
48,000 for first place, €36,000 for second place, and €24,000 for third place (with players on the same number of points sharing prize money, irrespective of tie-breaks), plus €3,500 per half-point for every player, for a total prize pool of €500,000.
2024
Predicted and scheduled events
* January 1
** In the United States, books, films, and other works published in 1928 will enter the public domain, assuming there are no changes made to copyright law.
***''Steamboat Willie'', Walt Disney's f ...