20 March 2024

Toronto Candidates - Visas

Visa problems for World Championship events and qualifiers aren't new -- consider, for example, the 1999 FIDE Knockout Matches (m-w.com; Las Vegas, VII-VIII, 1999), and the 2004 FIDE Knockout Matches (ditto; Tripoli, VI-VII, 2004) -- but they have never threatened to derail the organization of an event. The 2024 Toronto Candidates provided a new level of uncertainty:-
  • 2024-03-04: Candidates Tournament: Visa trouble (chessbase.com; AndrĂ© Schulz) • 'Four weeks before the start of the Candidates Tournament in Toronto, almost all the participants and their travelling companions are still waiting for the visas they applied for months ago to be issued. FIDE has now sent an "urgent visa appeal to the Canadian government" and is even considering moving the "most prestigious tournament in the chess world" to another country.'
  • 2024-03-08: Candidates Tournaments to take place in Toronto after all! (ditto) • 'FIDE has announced that all outstanding visa applications for the entry of the Candidates and their companions as well as organising staff have been approved by the Canadian authorities and the Candidates Tournaments will take place in Toronto starting from April 3, as was originally planned.'

The Chessbase.com reports provided a sober analysis of speculation concerning the global political issues behind the visa brouhaha. The corresponding Chess.com reports provided another level of brouhaha in the hundreds of comments about the situation:-

The second Chess.com report mentioned,

The event was at risk of being relocated to Spain with over 40 players and officials grappling with pending visa approvals, as revealed by Vladimir Drkulec, the President of the Canadian Chess Federation, last weekend.

The CFC's Drkulec participated in the commentary ('vdrkulec') during the rapidly evolving situation. One of his last comments, a long summary documenting the resolution of the crisis, is an important footnote to the historical record.

13 March 2024

Toronto Candidates - Women

In last week's post, Toronto Candidates - Kickoff (March 2024), I created a crosstable to determine the historical record of all eight participants playing each other. I ended the post saying,
Apologies for not creating a similar table for the Women's Candidates Tournament, which takes place at the same time in Toronto. I ran out of time for the table, but will make up for it when I can.

Since I was also interested in the results, I decided to give it priority. The last row is for the Women's World Champion, Ju Wenjun.

Gor Kon Lag Lei Muz Ram Sal Tan : Ju
Goryachkina xx * * * * * * * : *
Koneru, Humpy xx * * * * * * : *
Lagno xx * * * * * : *
Lei Tingjie xx * * * * : *
Muzychuk A. xx * * * : *
Rameshbabu xx * * : *
Salimova xx * : *
Tan Zhongyi xx : *
Ju Wenjun : xx

As with last week's table, the links under the players' names go to that player's FIDE rating page. The links in the crosstable go to Chessgames.com.

06 March 2024

Toronto Candidates - Kickoff

It's been nearly two months since I last posted on the two 2024 Candidates tournaments; see The Race for the 2024 Candidates Events (January 2024). Since the tournaments are due to start at the beginning of next month, it's time to get serious.

For the past six Candidates tournaments, I've produced a crosstable of links to Chessgames.com showing the record between each pair of players. The post for the 2022 tournament was Madrid Candidates - Kickoff (June 2022). First, here are some relevant links for the 2024 tournament:-

In previous kickoff posts, I included a link to my page for the event. I stopped creating my own pages starting with the current cycle, so I'll reference the Wikipedia page instead:-

The following table includes each players record against the reigning World Champion, Ding Liren. The players' names link to their corresponding FIDE page.

Aba Car Fir Guk Nak Nep Pra Vid : Din
Abasov xx * * * * * * * : *
Caruana xx * * * * * * : *
Firouzja xx * * * * * : *
Gukesh xx * * * * : *
Nakamura xx * * * : *
Nepomniachtchi xx * * : *
Praggnanandhaa xx * : *
Vidit (*) xx : *
Ding Liren : xx

(*) Vidit Santosh Gujrathi

Four of the eight players plus Ding Liren competed in the 2022 Madrid Candidates Tournament (m-w.com). The newcomers are Abasov, Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa, and Vidit.

Apologies for not creating a similar table for the Women's Candidates Tournament, which takes place at the same time in Toronto. I ran out of time for the table, but will make up for it when I can. The links for both the official site and the Wikipedia page lead to info on the Women's event.

28 February 2024

C31 Zonals++ More Names

The previous post, C31 Zonals++ More Data (February 2024), was about data missing from the page (C31) Zonal Qualifiers 2022-2023 (m-w.com). At the end of the post I noted,
It looks like I'll need another post on this subject to incorporate the Wikipedia data into the other data. I'll come back to this another time.

The resulting update added nearly 100 names. For more notes related to the qualifying players, see Talk: Chess World Cup 2023 (wikipedia.org). Kudos to the Wikipedians who did a nice job documenting the World Cup on the main article.

21 February 2024

C31 Zonals++ More Data

In the previous post, C31 Zonal Qualification Paths (February 2024), I wrote,
There are many names missing on the new page. I'll come back later and try to fill in the blanks.

That 'new page' is (C31) Zonal Qualifiers 2022-2023 (m-w.com). I created a database and loaded two sources for data into it:-

  • Players who were listed in FIDE's document 'FIDE World Cup 2023: Preliminary lists of eligible players announced' (125 players); see C31 Regulations for World Cup Qualifiers (November 2023), for a link to the document.
  • Players who participated at 'FIDE World Cup 2023' (Baku; 206 players).

I determined that of the 125 players in the 'Preliminary lists of eligible players', 11 did not play at Baku. Of the 206 players who played at Baku, 89 were not in the preliminary list. That made 100 names to investigate, which is too many. I turned to the Wikipedia page, Chess World Cup 2023, for help.

The Wikipedia page lists all 206 players who participated in Baku, along with their qualification paths. When I compared FIDE's list of players to Wikipedia's list, I had 35 mismatches. Most of these were due to the usual difficulties with comparing names -- letters specific to a language, Asian names, Spanish names -- along with one real difference in spelling: Aleksandar Indic / Indjic of Serbia. After correcting those mismatches, the lists matched almost perfectly.

From the Wikipedia data, I derived a few counts, summarized in the following chart. The left column shows federations that had more than three players at Baku, out of a total of 86 different federations with at least one player.

The right column shows the counts of players who qualified via a zonal. The middle column shows the counts of players who qualified via a route other than a zonal. Most of the non-zonal codes are easily understood; 'WC' means the 2021 World Cup at Sochi.

It looks like I'll need another post on this subject to incorporate the Wikipedia data into the other data. I'll come back to this another time.

14 February 2024

C31 Zonal Qualification Paths

Continuing with zonals++ for the current cycle, after...

...there remains...

Still to do: Create a 'C31 Qualifiers' page and add it the appropriate pages.

...The new page is (C31) Zonal Qualifiers 2022-2023 (m-w.com). FIDE's official announcement for the qualifying players appears to have been made prematurely, so there are many names missing on the new page. I'll come back later and try to fill in the blanks.

07 February 2024

1998 Zonals 2.x References

In the previous post, 1998 Zonals 2.x (January 2024), I discussed several updates related to the 1998-99 zonal cycle (C18) and that concerned the American continent. For this post, I added the corresponding references to two of those zonal events:-
2.0 San Felipe 1998-10 (A)
2.1 Denver 1998-10 (B)

Both events now have additional info on the page covering the events for that cycle: (C18) Zonals 1998-1999 (m-w.com). Here are a couple of notes for the two events:-

(A) This was a new event that I had previously overlooked while developing the index page for The World Chess Championship Zonals.
(B) I added a link to the post for '1998 Zonals 2.x'. The focus of the post concerned the playoffs for the preliminary ('group') stage of the event, a U.S. championship.

There might be even more to the story. I had overlooked the '2.0 San Felipe' event partly because the winner of that event, Alexander Ivanov, was listed by FIDE as qualifying through one of the 'Nominees by Continental President'. In a feature article for the April 1999 issue of Chess Life, GM Ivanov wrote,

I was happy to hear the news from the last FIDE Congress in Elista (Kalmykia), held during the last Chess Olympiad, that a tournament called the Pan American Championship, to be held in San Felipe, Venezuela from October 25 through November 5, 1998, would be a qualifying event for the coming FIDE World Championship in Las Vegas.

According to my page (C18) Zonal Qualifiers 1998-1999 (m-w.com), there were four nominees in the same category as Ivanov:-

Nominees by Continental President
15. Africa: H. HAMDOUCHI (MAR)
16. America: A. IVANOV (USA)
17. Asia: AL-MODIAHKI (QAT)
18. Europe: L. ARONIAN (ARM)

Did any of the other three nominees qualify via a competition? My preliminary investigation said, 'No', but I am not yet convinced. TBD.