Thursday 16 November 2017

FIDE Grand Prix resumes

The final event of the 2017 FIDE Grand Prix series begins today in Mallorca, Spain. While the GP series tends to get lost among the other big events on the calendar (GCT, World Cup plus big opens in Iceland, UK and Isle of Man), it still helps determine the qualifiers for next years Candidates Tournament. The top two finishers (who did not qualify through the World Cup) qualify for the Candidates, and at this stage there are 4 players still in with a chance. 
Mamedyarov and Grischuk currently hold down the top two places, but have already played there 3 events (each player plays 3 of the 4 GP tournaments). As a result, there is still a chance they can be overtaken by Vachier-Lagrave and Radjabov. Ding Liren is also in the leading group but has already qualified (via the World Cup).
The official site for the tournament is https://worldchess.com/gp2017/ I'm pretty sure there is no free coverage from this site (it is a pay for view event), and I'm not seeing any of the other major websites with links to coverage (although I may have missed them). Whether this is due to legal reasons or indifference (or indifference caused by legal reasons) I do not know.

2 comments:

Pete (Ireland) said...

Chessbase is showing it at present. I haven't checked any others.

Pete (Ireland) said...

Radjabov is being shown as drawing with white in 12 moves, against the second-lowest rated player in the field. So it looks as if he's either playing a (risky) Swiss gambit, or is not interested in making a push for the Candidates. Good news for Mamedyarov.