2017 World Cup 2-27 September, Tbilisi

[Mick Norris]

I'd want to check this, but I think as it stands the top half of the draw has five players who have taken part in Candidates tournaments, and the bottom half none.

Which is quite good; a new Candidate

[JustinHorton]

Strange just on general principle that Matlakov didn't exchange queens when he had the chance: also neuters the pawn storm.

[soheil_hooshdaran]

Did But end the reign of Carlsen?

No. Carlsen is still World Champion and World #1, he's just no longer in this tournament. Whose main function is to be a qualifier for a qualifier for a match against Carlsen, so I'm sure he'll get over it.

so why did Carlsen take part?

[Roger de Coverly]

so why did Carlsen take part?

Possibly for the potential winnings, but he has also said in the past that he would favour a knock-out system for determining the World Champion. Maybe he didn't have any other invites for September.

[NickFaulks]

so why did Carlsen take part?

Why does he ever play in any competition?

[Mick Norris]

As it has from the initial draw, the top half looks the harder route

Bu v Svidler
MVL v Grischuk
Ivanchuk v Giri
Aronian v Dubov

[JustinHorton]

Chess24 is currently giving us 1-0 in Aronian-Matlakov - is that correct?

[Chris Rice]

Aronian is through.

[IM Jack Rudd]

Probably not. My guess would be that they moved the kings to e4 and e5 to register the result... but with the black king already on d5 when the white king was put on e4, the wrong result was registered.

[JustinHorton]

Yes, they've corrected it now - normally it's corrected more quickly but I went through enough refreshes to wonder!

[JustinHorton]

Anyway, top half as per Mick:

As it has from the initial draw, the top half looks the harder route

Bu v Svidler
MVL v Grischuk
Ivanchuk v Giri
Aronian v Dubov

Bottom half

So v Jobava
Fedoseev v Rodshtein
Najer v Rapport
Wang v Ding

As stated above, the top half includes five previous Candidates, the bottom half none!

[Christopher Kreuzer]

No Armageddon games yet.

The 2005 World Cup had 4 Armageddon games (5 if you include the placement matches to decide placings 3-15). 2007 had four Armageddon games. 2009 had no Armageddon games (not surprising as for the tiebreaks they played 4 rapidplay games instead of two and then five blitz games). 2011 had two Armageddon games. 2013 had three Armageddon games. 2015 had three Armageddon games.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Nationalities: of the 16 left: five from Russia, three from China, one from the Netherlands, one from Armenia, one from France, one from the Ukraine, one from the USA, one from Georgia, one from Israel, and one from Hungary.

[Chris Rice]

Only 7 of the top 16 are left in the draw, there were 10 in 2015, 9 in 2013, 10 in 2011, 9 in 2009, 11 in 2007 and Svidler has always been present.

[JustinHorton]

The bottom half is (I think) more than ten seeding places, per player, weaker than the top half.

Using the ratings on Chess24, the top half averages 2754 and the bottom half 2720.

(EDIT: Had Giri and Grischuk lost, I think the average seeding would be identical, while the average rating difference would be only five.)