Grand Chess Tour

[Mick Norris]

Website

Norway, St Louis, London 2015, Indonesia to be added in 2016

Carlsen, Caruana, Nakamura, Anand, Grischuk, Topalov, Giri, MVL, Aronian

Kramnik turned down his invite

A tenth player will be selected as a wildcard to each individual event by the organizing committee

[Angus French]

Kramnik turned down his invite

Wesley So too, apparently. The website's Rules and Regulation page says invitations were sent to the top ten players on the January 2015 rating list and So was #10. With $15,000 for last place in each of the three participating events, that's a lot of money to miss out on.

[Leonard Barden]

Kramnik turned down his invite

Wesley So too, apparently. The website's Rules and Regulation page says invitations were sent to the top ten players on the January 2015 rating list and So was #10. With $15,000 for last place in each of the three participating events, that's a lot of money to miss out on.

Norway (15-26 June) overlaps with So's match against David Navara in Prague (12-16 June).

[Chris Rice]

Wonder how long it will be till Kasparov falls out with the organisers.

[David Robertson]

Boring.

Same old same old

[Ian Thompson]

Kramnik turned down his invite

Wesley So too, apparently. The website's Rules and Regulation page says invitations were sent to the top ten players on the January 2015 rating list and So was #10. With $15,000 for last place in each of the three participating events, that's a lot of money to miss out on.

It doesn't say two players have declined, it says eight players have accepted, which is not the same thing. If So has a prior commitment he might have said he'd like to take part, but first needs to see if he can rearrange his match against Navara.

[Leonard Barden]

Kramnik turned down his invite

Wesley So too, apparently. The website's Rules and Regulation page says invitations were sent to the top ten players on the January 2015 rating list and So was #10. With $15,000 for last place in each of the three participating events, that's a lot of money to miss out on.

It doesn't say two players have declined, it says eight players have accepted, which is not the same thing. If So has a prior commitment he might have said he'd like to take part, but first needs to see if he can rearrange his match against Navara.

Reports now are naming Vachier-Lagrave as the ninth player.

[Roger de Coverly]

I see they've come up with a previously unused move rate, namely 40 moves in 2 hours, the rest of the game in an hour, but with thirty second increments starting at move 41.

[Chris Rice]

Nothing untoward about Kramnik's non-participation apparently:

"There are events for which I have already signed up. In addition, there is a very important World Cup, which will be my last chance to reach the Candidates. If I were to sign up for three more events, then I would not see my family at all and I am already at the age where that matters to me. I would have been happy to play in the Grand Chess Tour, but ideally, I would have liked to choose just two of the three events. But the rules are that I would have to play all three and that, unfortunately, I cannot do."

http://chess-news.ru/en/node/18814

[Chris Rice]

But there is something untoward about Karjakin's non-participation apparently. The first tournament is Stavanger 15-26 June 2015. From the Russian chess news site:

Sergey Karjakin: "The Stavanger Organisers Invited Me, But Then Changed Their Mind"

"Many people have asked me why I am not playing in Stavanger" - wrote Sergey Karjakin on his Facebook page. "The truth is that the organizers invited me personally, but then changed their mind, referring to the fact that they have changed the rules, and now it is not a separate super-tournament but part of a tournament series. Then they probably felt uncomfortable about what they had done, so they nominated me for the qualifying event! Quite apart from the fact that it overlaps with the Grand Prix in Khanty-Mansiysk, I think that, to put it mildly, it is rather strange to be invited to qualify for a tournament, which I have won twice in a row. So I would not have played in the qualifier anyway. There is no moral to this story, let everyone draw their own conclusions. But having been asked why I am not playing, that is my answer. "

We would remind readers that this year, Stavanger is one of the stages of a new cycle of tournaments called the Grand Chess Tour. Nine participants of the series are determined, and Karjakin is not among them.

http://chess-news.ru/en/node/18968

[Roger de Coverly]

But there is something untoward about Karjakin's non-participation apparently.

Assuming Kasparov has some influence on the selection of participants, wearing a Putin T-shirt was unlikely to appeal to the organisers of the Tour.

At some stage there is going to have to be an announcement about how the wild card in the London leg is going to be determined.

[Mick Norris]

After Norway:

Name GCT points
1 Topalov,V 13
2 Anand,V 10
3 Nakamura,H 8
4 Giri,A 7
5 Caruana,F 6
6 Vachier Lagrave,M 5
7 Carlsen,M 4
8 Grischuk,A 3
9 Aronian,L 2
10 Hammer,J 1

[Mick Norris]

Kramnik turned down his invite

Wesley So too, apparently. The website's Rules and Regulation page says invitations were sent to the top ten players on the January 2015 rating list and So was #10. With $15,000 for last place in each of the three participating events, that's a lot of money to miss out on.

So is said to have been given the wildcard for St Louis, although they don't seem to have announced that formally yet

[Mick Norris]

So confirmed - no surprise as he was supposed to be playing all 3 events but the Navara match clashed with Norway

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