The Chess World Cup 2015 was a 128-player

single-elimination A single-elimination, knockout, or sudden death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final mat ...

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 in

Baku Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world an ...

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of th ...

, from 10 September to 5 October 2015.

Sergey Karjakin Sergey Alexandrovich Karjakin, . (born 12 January 1990) is a Russian chess grandmaster (formerly representing Ukraine). A chess prodigy, he previously held the record for the world's youngest ever grandmaster, (until it was eventually taken ...

won the competition on tie-breaks after a four-game final against

Peter Svidler Pyotr Veniaminovich Svidler (russian: Пётр Вениами́нович Сви́длер; born 17 June 1976), commonly known as Peter Svidler, is a Russian chess grandmaster and an eight-time Russian Chess Champion who now frequently comment ...

. Both finalists qualified for the 2016 Candidates Tournament. The winner of the

Chess World Cup 2013 The Chess World Cup 2013 was a 128-player single-elimination chess tournament, played between 11 August and 2 September 2013, in the hotel Scandic Tromsø in Tromsø, Norway. It was won by Vladimir Kramnik, who defeated Dmitry Andreikin 2½–1� ...

Vladimir Kramnik Vladimir Borisovich Kramnik (russian: Влади́мир Бори́сович Кра́мник; born 25 June 1975) is a Russian chess grandmaster. He was the Classical World Chess Champion from 2000 to 2006, and the undisputed World Chess Ch ...

, was defeated by

Dmitry Andreikin Dmitry Vladimirovich Andreikin (russian: Дмитрий Владимирович Андрейкин, born 5 February 1990) is a Russian chess grandmaster, World Junior Chess Champion in 2010 and two-time Russian Chess Champion (2012 and 2018 ...

in the third round.

Format

Matches consisted of two games (except for the final, which consisted of four). Players had 90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an

addition Addition (usually signified by the plus symbol ) is one of the four basic operations of arithmetic, the other three being subtraction, multiplication and division. The addition of two whole numbers results in the total amount or '' sum'' ...

of 30 seconds per move from the start of the game. If a match was tied after the regular games, tie breaks were played the next day. The format for the tie breaks was as follows: * Two

rapid Rapids are sections of a river where the river bed has a relatively steep gradient, causing an increase in water velocity and turbulence. Rapids are hydrological features between a ''run'' (a smoothly flowing part of a stream) and a ''cascade'' ...

games (25 minutes plus 10 seconds increment). * If the score was tied after two rapid games, two rapid games (10 minutes plus 10 seconds increment). * If the score was tied after four rapid games, the opponents play two blitz games (five minutes plus three seconds increment). * If the score was tied after a pair of blitz games, an

armageddon According to the Book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Christian Bible, Armageddon (, from grc, Ἁρμαγεδών ''Harmagedōn'', Late Latin: , from Hebrew: ''Har Məgīddō'') is the prophesied location of a gathering of armies ...

game (in which a draw counts as a win for Black) was played. White had 5 minutes and Black had 4 minutes, with an increment of 3 seconds/move starting from move 61.

Prize money

According to the regulations, and contrary to many elite tournaments even including the

FIDE Grand Prix The FIDE Grand Prix is a biennial series of chess tournaments, organized by FIDE and its commercial partner Agon. Each series consist of three to six chess tournaments, which form part of the qualification cycle for the World Chess Championship or ...

, all players had to pay their own expenses for travel.

Participants

The qualified players are seeded by their

FIDE rating The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor. The Elo system was invented as an improved ...

s of August 2015. Eighteen players qualified by rating. All players are grandmasters unless indicated otherwise. # , 2816 (R) # , 2814 (R) # , 2808 (R) # , 2793 (R) # , 2779 (R) # , 2777 (WC) # , 2771 (R) # , 2770 (R) # , 2765 (R) # , 2759 (E14) # , 2753 (R) # , 2747 (WC) # , 2741 (R) # , 2740 (R) # , 2740 (R) # , 2739 (R) # , 2738 (ON) # , 2736 (R) # , 2735 (R) # , 2733 (E14) # , 2731 (WC) # , 2726 (J13) # , 2726 (R) # , 2725 (Z3.5) # , 2724 (E14) # , 2723 (E14) # , 2720 (WC) # , 2719 (R) # , 2714 (R) # , 2713 (AS14) # , 2710 (E14) # , 2710 (E15) # , 2705 (R) # , 2705 (E15) # , 2704 (AS14) # , 2702 (PN) # , 2699 (Z3.3) # , 2699 (E15) # , 2690 (E14) # , 2689 (E15) # , 2680 (Z2.1) # , 2678 (E15) # , 2673 (E14) # , 2673 (E14) # , 2671 (E14) # , 2671 (PN) # , 2670 (Z2.1) # , 2669 (E14) # , 2667 (E15) # , 2665 (E15) # , 2664 (E15) # , 2663 (AM14) # , 2662 (Z3.3) # , 2662 (Z2.1) # , 2661 (E14) # , 2661 (E14) # , 2660 (PN) # , 2659 (E14) # , 2659 (Z2.3) # , 2659 (E14) # , 2658 (E14) # , 2658 (E15) # , 2655 (AM14) # , 2655 (E15) # , 2654 (E14) # , 2653 (E15) # , 2651 (ON) # , 2649 (E15) # , 2644 (ON) # , 2644 (AS15) # , 2643 (AS14) # , 2643 (AM15) # , 2642 (E15) # , 2640 (AF) # , 2639 (E15) # , 2637 (E15) # , 2636 (Z2.4) # , 2635 (Z3.7) # , 2635 (Z2.1) # , 2635 (E14) # , 2634 (ACP) # , 2633 (E14) # , 2632 (AM14) # , 2631 (AS15) # , 2631 (E15) # , 2626 (E14) # , 2625 (AM15) # , 2624 (E15) # , 2624 (PN) # , 2622 (E15) # , 2622 (E14) # , 2621 (ON) # , 2618 (AS14) # , 2616 (AM15) # , 2616 (Z3.5) # , 2614 (E14) # , 2607 (J14) # , 2607 (E15) # , 2605 (Z2.5) # , 2603 (E15) # , 2601 (E14) # , 2600 (AS15) # , 2600 (Z3.4) # , 2595 (E15) # , 2595 (AS14) # , 2591 (AF) # , 2589 (E14) # , 2577 (AM14) # , 2570 (AS15) # , 2568 (Z3.1) # , 2563 (AM15) # , 2553 (Z2.1) # , 2547 (E15) # , 2528 (WWC) # , 2514 (Z3.6) # , 2511 (Z2.5) # , 2509 (Z3.2) # , 2495 (Z2.3) # , 2491 (E15) # , 2453 (PN) # , 2436 (Z2.2) # , 2428 (Z3.4) # , 2421 (Z2.4) # , 2416 (AS15) # , 2357 (Z4.2) # , 2330 (Z4.1) # , 2291 (Z4.3) # , 2241 (Z4.4)

Qualification paths

*WC: Semi-finalists of the

(4) *WWC: Women's World Champion 2015 (1) *J13 and J14: World Junior Champions 2013 and 2014 (2) *R: Rating (average of all published ratings from February 2014 to January 2015 is used) (19) *E14 and E15: European Individual Championships 2014 (23) and 2015 (23) *AM14 and AM15: American Continental Championships 2014 (4) and 2015 (4) *AS14 and AS15:

Asian Chess Championship The Asian Chess Championship is a chess tournament open to all players from Asian chess federations (FIDE zones from 3.1 to 3.7). It's held with the Swiss system and consists in two divisions, Open and Women's, the latter of which is reserved to ...

s 2014 (5) and 2015 (5) *AF:

African Chess Championship The first African Chess Championship was played in 1998. Ibrahim Hasan Labib and Mohamed Tissir both shared first place with 7/10, but the former took the title. The 2007 championship was the FIDE Zone 4 qualifier for the Chess World Cup 2007, th ...

2015 (2) * Z2.1 (5), Z2.2 (1), Z2.3 (2), Z2.4 (2), Z2.5 (2), Z3.1 (1), Z3.2 (1), Z3.3 (2), Z3.4 (2), Z3.5 (2), Z3.6 (1), Z3.7 (1), Z4.1 (1), Z4.2 (1), Z4.3 (1), Z4.4 (1): Zonal tournaments * ACP: highest-placed participant of the ACP Tour who has not qualified with the previous criteria (1) *PN: FIDE President nominee (5) *ON: Organizer nominee (4)

Calendar

Results, Rounds 1–4

Section 1

Section 2

Section 3

Section 4

Section 5

Section 6

Section 7

Section 8

Results, rounds 5–7

Final, 1–5 October

References

External links

*
Pairings tree
(PDF). ''FIDE''.
Videostream
at Livestream.com {{Chess World Cups

2015 File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the April ...

World Cup A world cup is a global sporting competition in which the participant entities – usually international teams or individuals representing their countries – compete for the title of world champion. The event most associated with the concept i ...

2015 in Azerbaijani sport International sports competitions hosted by Azerbaijan Sports competitions in Baku