The chess year ends with the World Rapid and Blitz Championship in Samarkand

The tournament that concludes the chess year opens today in Samarkand. The current World Rapid and Blitz Championship is of particular importance from the point of view of the fight for the champion title. It will decide the fate of one of the last two tickets to the candidate tournament, in which the status of a contender for the title of world champion will be at stake. Three grandmasters have a chance of winning it – the Dutchman Anish Giri, as well as the Indians Dommaraju Gukesh and Arjun Erigaisi.

Right before the New Year, the International Chess Federation (FIDE) traditionally holds one of its main competitions. The current world championship in rapid chess and blitz will be hosted by the ancient Uzbek city, and almost the entire elite of the discipline is participating in it. In the women’s tournament there are generally minimal losses. In men’s, they are present (for example, the current world champion Chinese Ding Liren, Americans Hikaru Nakamura and Wesley So, and Frenchman Alireza Firouzja did not come to Samarkand), but the vast majority of celebrities are there, including Magnus Carlsen. It was the outstanding Norwegian, who, although he voluntarily gave up the championship title, is still perceived as a chess frontman, won both previous championships a year ago in Almaty. A game with tighter (and preferably much tougher) time control than the classical one is, in principle, the strong point of today’s Carlsen, in which he was virtually invulnerable over the past few months. And it will be interesting to see if someone will be able to cause him problems in Samarkand.

But this World Cup also has an additional intrigue, very acute and important. And it was ensured by the new regulations of the championship cycle, launched by FIDE in 2023.

A candidate tournament will take place in Toronto in April. In this competition, the eight grandmasters who have qualified for it will determine the holder of candidate status, that is, the one who will fight Ding Liren in the next championship match. At the moment, a week before the end of the first part of the series, the names of the holders of six trips to Canada are known. Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi received his automatically – as a loser in the championship match against Ding Liren. Three more names became known after the World Cup in Baku. Actually, Magnus Carlsen won it. But interest in the title hunt never seems to have returned to him, and he is expected to officially bow out of the trip to Toronto at the start of 2024. So slots in the candidate tournament will go to the young Indian Rameshbabu Pragnanandha, who lost to him in the Baku final, as well as the semi-finalists – the American Fabiano Caruana and the unexpectedly successful Azerbaijani Nijat Abasov. Finally, following the results of the Grand Swiss tournament, two more representatives from India and the USA won tickets – Vidit Gujrati and Hikaru Nakamura.

Two remain vacant. One will be won by the one who takes the highest place in the January FIDE ranking among chess players who did not qualify for the candidate tournament earlier. Moreover, in the main, classic ranking, the Samarkand championship does not affect it in any way. Only two grandmasters can count on this ticket – Wesley So and Alireza Firouzja, who is slightly behind him, who recently tried to make up for lost time in games with ordinary opponents in France, but did not succeed. Formally, he still has time to try to repeat the trick.

Another ticket is precisely the fruit of an adjustment to the regulations. FIDE issues her based on the results of the FIDE Circuit series she invented, which includes many major competitions, including, of course, the Samarkand championship. In fact, its winner is already known. Fabiano Caruana is out of reach for his pursuers, but he already has a ticket to the candidate tournament. Therefore, it will go from FIDE Circuit to whoever finishes second.

And following Caruana are Dommaraju Gukesh (87.36 points), Anish Giri (84.31), Wesley So (83.40) and Arjun Erigaisi (81.24). And all of them, except for So, who is not performing in Samarkand, apparently relying on the rating, may end up in second position. All in all, it will be a battle of Giri’s experience against the passion and talent of 17-year-old Gukesh and 20-year-old Erigaisi.

The balance in the mini-race for a ticket to the candidate tournament is quite difficult to calculate, and even chess statisticians like Ty Prus-Zimmerman, head of the Chess by Numbers website, estimate it only approximately. But it is clear that the prodigy Gukesh has some reserve of safety. Let’s say, to beat him, Giri will most likely need a medal from at least one of the championships, and Erigaisi will need a gold medal.

Alexey Dospehov