FIDE World Chess Cup 2023: the most intense super-GM tournament is starting in Azerbaijan

From the 30th of July to the 24th of August, the capital city of Azerbaijan is hosting a fierce eliminatory competition, the FIDE World Chess Cup, that sends the top three players into the Candidates Tournament. Both the Women and Men Cups are taking place simultaneously, with the highest-rated players in the sections listed below:

Magnus Carlsen’s decision to participate in the Fide World Cup this year has brought a lot of excitement to the chess community. After forfeiting his title last year, many were unsure if Carlsen was still motivated by the World Championship title, or even by classic chess altogether. Yet, he could get in Baku a direct ticket to the Candidates, and there’s one last step left from there to a Ding – Carlsen match, but in 2025 instead of 2023.

Hosting 206 players in the Open section and 103 in the Women’s one, the FIDE World Cup gives many young players a rare opportunity to face considerably higher-rated opponents. The structure of the pairings is also designed for this purpose.

 In the first round, the top 50 players are given a bye, with the other 156 paired in the following way: the highest-ranked player of the first half plays the lowest player of the bottom half. This differs from Swiss-format tournaments, where the first player is paired with the number one player in the bottom half of the player pools.

Thus, in the first round of the FIDE World Cup, player number 206, Alhassadi Yousef A. from Libya will meet the 51st-ranked player, Bulgarian GM Cheparinov Ivan. Yousef has a FIDE rate of 2030, which makes his game against 2667 Cheparinov even more exciting – in fact, I’m watching their match as I’m writing this article!

In the second round, the 50 top GMs in Baku will join the surviving 78 players from the first round in the pairings. In the following six rounds, the number of players gets cut in half every round. If you want to learn more details about the format of the tournament, check out the official FIDE regulations here.

An unprecedented prize fund of 2.5 million dollars has been allocated for the event, with 1,834,000$ in the Open Section and 676,250$ in the Women’s section. The tournament’s high stakes have made it challenging for viewers to forecast the top 3 players in the final leaderboard. The popular platform chess.com even started a contest over who can guess the winner of the World Cup. Since the match-up brackets are posted online, people can make predictions on the results of their favorite players.

Interesting and hard-to-predict clashes are prone to occur in both sections. For example, both winners of the 2021 World Cup, GM Alexandra Kosteniuk and GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda are fighting to reclaim their titles this year. Furthermore, the Women’s World Chess Champion, GM Ju Wenjun, is starting as the tournament’s number 1 and is expected to have a substantial dwelling with the Russian GM Aleksandra Goryachkina, who was a challenger at the title in 2020. Ju Wenjun defended her title again earlier this summer against GM Lei Tingjie. Personally, I am excited to follow the trajectories of some of the young players that I have met in junior competitions, such as WGM Beydullayeva Govhar, IM Nurgyul Salimova, and WGM Viktoria Radeva. I also wish a successful tournament to IM Irina Bulmaga, representing my birth country, Romania.

In the Men’s section, two other events caught the public’s eye, besides Magnus’s return in the run for the World Championship. First, the world’s number 6 Alireza Firouzja is absent from the cup. Alireza participated earlier this year in Norway Chess and in Grand Chess Tour Romania, so his absence from Baku left many surprised.

Another exciting turn was Hikaru Nakamura’s initial decline in the FIDE invitation. He announced he had other travels planned for the summer that were perhaps related to him recently getting married to WGM Atousa Purkashiyan. Thanks to his chess content on YouTube and Twitch, Hikaru has a broad audience following his games, both in OTB tournaments and online. Thus, many fans are rooting to see Hikaru as a challenger for the World Champion title. The long-lasting chess rivalry between Carlsen and Nakamura has raised even more enthusiasm around the idea. Luckily for the chess fans, Hikaru had a change of plans and was granted a wildcard to participate in Azerbaijan.

Hikaru’s Twitch channel has, as of today, 1.9M followers, which speaks to the rising popularity of online chess and also highlights the diversification of chess content and entertainment that has taken place in the past years. During his streams, he defeats strong GMs and takes on challenges, such as his famous 12-hour speed runs, where he starts with a brand new chess account and brings its rating to the 2800s with a crushing winning rate.

Chess no longer brings people together only through FIDE-rated elitist competitions. Instead, it has expanded to streaming, live commentary and analysis, YouTube, online courses, short reels, TikTok, and many more. This expansion is fascinating to me, as I have been playing chess regularly since I was seven years old. Now, alongside OTB games, I’m an avid player of online chess, streaming some of my games on our Twitch channel.

Let us know in the comments below the three players you would want to see sent to the Candidates. Until next time, enjoy the FIDE World Cup matches!

Author

MARIA CIOCAN