Yesterday was a rest day after round ten of the 2024 Candidates tournament. A week ago, in Toronto Candidates - First Week (April 2024), I wrote, Here is [a] chart, showing the [fifth] round in the 2022 tournament with the leader circled in red. Also shown is the overall standing after round five in the 2024 tournament as presented by a top chess news source. [...] Also circled in red in the top chart is the 2022 leader after ten rounds plus the winner at the end. After all three rounds, the leader was GM Nepomniachtchi. Let's extract the 2022 portion of that chart and combine it with the stan ..read more

Yesterday was round five of the 2024 Candidates tournament. In the previous post, Toronto Candidates - Last Resources (April 2024), I mentioned charts, lots of charts:- Chart showing the round-by-round progress of the participants in the 2013, 2014, and 2016 candidates tournaments [...] New chart for the 2018 and 2020 tournaments. I'll do the same for the next post by adapting the chart developed for the 2022 Candidates Tournament. As promised, here is the adapted chart, showing the same round in the 2022 tournament with the leader circled in red. Also shown is the overall standing after round ..read more

The two FIDE Candidate tournaments start tomorrow. After a series of four consecutive preliminary posts, starting with Toronto Candidates - Kickoff (March 2024), we're one day away from the real deal. Since there is nothing to say about the results, let's list some of the resources. First, here are some general references. The TWIC pages are good for getting a bird's eye view of the two main events -- the Candidates and the Women's Candidates -- without having to scroll past the dozens of large, extraneous photos that the other main chess sites use to illustrate their reports. FIDE Candidate ..read more

Given all the visa trouble we saw in the previous post, Toronto Candidates - Visas (March 2024), you might well ask, 'Why was Toronto Canada chosen to host the event?'. The answer to the question starts with Partners (candidates2024.fide.com), where we find, The Scheinberg Family • The Scheinberg family is a long-term partner of the International Chess Federation. The cooperation that started a few years ago has already resulted in three Grand Swiss events (2019, 2021 and 2023), two editions oa [sic; 'of'?] Women Grand Swiss (2021 and 2023), and the FIDE Candidates (2022). Supporting the FIDE ..read more

Visa problems for World Championship events and qualifiers aren't new -- consider, for example, the 1999 FIDE Knockout Matches (m-w.com; Las Vegas, VII-VIII, 1999), and the 2004 FIDE Knockout Matches (ditto; Tripoli, VI-VII, 2004) -- but they have never threatened to derail the organization of an event. The 2024 Toronto Candidates provided a new level of uncertainty:- 2024-03-04: Candidates Tournament: Visa trouble (chessbase.com; André Schulz) • 'Four weeks before the start of the Candidates Tournament in Toronto, almost all the participants and their travelling companions are still waiting ..read more

In last week's post, Toronto Candidates - Kickoff (March 2024), I created a crosstable to determine the historical record of all eight participants playing each other. I ended the post saying, Apologies for not creating a similar table for the Women's Candidates Tournament, which takes place at the same time in Toronto. I ran out of time for the table, but will make up for it when I can. Since I was also interested in the results, I decided to give it priority. The last row is for the Women's World Champion, Ju Wenjun. Gor Kon Lag Lei Muz Ram Sal Tan : Ju Goryachkina xx ..read more

In the previous post, C31 Zonal Qualification Paths (February 2024), I wrote, There are many names missing on the new page. I'll come back later and try to fill in the blanks. That 'new page' is (C31) Zonal Qualifiers 2022-2023 (m-w.com). I created a database and loaded two sources for data into it:- Players who were listed in FIDE's document 'FIDE World Cup 2023: Preliminary lists of eligible players announced' (125 players); see C31 Regulations for World Cup Qualifiers (November 2023), for a link to the document. Players who participated at 'FIDE World Cup 2023' (Baku; 206 players). I dete ..read more

Continuing with zonals++ for the current cycle, after... 2023-12-27:- C31 Zonal Clippings, and 2024-01-03:- C31 More Zonal Clippings ...there remains... Still to do: Create a 'C31 Qualifiers' page and add it the appropriate pages. ...The new page is (C31) Zonal Qualifiers 2022-2023 (m-w.com). FIDE's official announcement for the qualifying players appears to have been made prematurely, so there are many names missing on the new page. I'll come back later and try to fill in the blanks ..read more

In the previous post, 1998 Zonals 2.x (January 2024), I discussed several updates related to the 1998-99 zonal cycle (C18) and that concerned the American continent. For this post, I added the corresponding references to two of those zonal events:- 2.0 San Felipe 1998-10 (A) 2.1 Denver 1998-10 (B) Both events now have additional info on the page covering the events for that cycle: (C18) Zonals 1998-1999 (m-w.com). Here are a couple of notes for the two events:- (A) This was a new event that I had previously overlooked while developing the index page for The World Chess Championship Zonals. (B ..read more

A post from earlier this month, World Championships from 50 and 25 Years Ago (January 2024), uncovered a couple of details about the 1998-1999 zonals. The relevant info is in the following clipping which was taken from that post. All of that together prompted me to comment, The qualification of GMs Gulko, Ivanov, and Kudrin, is not consistent between the two sources. GM Ivanov's qualification is confirmed in TWIC 209, but the details about the other two GMs need further investigation. TWIC 209 reported, 12) Panam Championship in Venezuela • GM Alexander Ivanov took the single qualifying place ..read more