FIDE Publishes Candidates' Tournament Pairings

In the first round of the €420,000 / $515,000 FIDE Candidates' Tournament, on March 10, the World Cup finalists Levon Aronian and Ding Liren face each other. The other pairings are Vladimir Kramnik vs Alexander Grischuk, Sergey Karjakin vs Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, and Fabiano Caruana vs Wesley So.

Last week other news took priority, but now it's definitely interesting took look at the pairings for the upcoming Candidates' Tournament. On February 9, the World Chess Federation published the full pairings on its website. 

This was in accordance with the regulations (here in PDF), which stipulate that the pairings are conducted in the FIDE office in Athens a month in advance.

An important aspect of these early pairings is that players from the same country are paired against each other in the early rounds (and also in the early rounds of the second half), to avoid any (suspicion of) collaboration. 

The background behind this measure goes all the way back to the Candidates' Tournament in 1962 in Curacao, where Bobby Fischer accused the Soviet participants of collusion: Tigran Petrosian, Efim Geller and Paul Keres drew all 12 mutual games in an average of only 19 moves.

This year the tournament has three players from Russia, and two from the USA.

2018 FIDE Candidates' Tournament | Participants

The first round is scheduled for March 10 at 3 p.m. local time (9 a.m. Eastern, 6 a.m. Pacific). Below are the full pairings for the tournament. There are four rest days: on March 13, 17 and 21 and 25.

2018 FIDE Candidates' Tournament | Pairings

In case of a tie, the following tiebreak rules will be used:

a) The results of the games between the players involved in the tie.
b) The total number of wins in the tournament of every player involved in the tie.
c) Sonneborn - Berger System.

In the unlikely event that players are still tied, a playoff will be played on March 28.

The tournament will be held in the Külhaus Berlin, a "factory"-style building that used to be a cooling place to keep foods fresh but nowadays is being used for art, concerts, and exhibitions. It consists of seven floors, of which five will be used during the tournament.

An interior photo courtesy of the Kühlhaus website.

Tickets will cost from €20 to €40 a day, and tournament passes will be €170. VIP options will also be available. Following the match online will cost $15.

During the whole event, the Chessbrahs will bring you live coverage for free on both Twitch.tv/Chessbrah and Chess.com/TV with commentary by GMs Yasser Seirawan, Eric Hansen, Robin van Kampen and Aman Hambleton.

Their opponent in the desired world title match in November 2018, Magnus Carlsen, gave a statement on the candidates after his recent Fischer Random match:

"I am very much looking forward to it as a chess fan. I’m always interested to see what people have in store in terms of ideas and especially the last Candidates' there were so many twists and turns to follow so the only thing I am hoping for is that, last Candidates', I was down with a flu most of the time which was kind of miserable even though I could follow the event so this time I hope to be a bit fresher and then I can enjoy it even more."