2017 World Chess Cup: Semifinals
September 2nd-27th, 2017 (Tbilisi, Georgia) SEMI-FINALS |
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| Round 1 | Round 2 | Round 3 | Round 4 | Round 5 | | Semifinals | Finals | |
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Photos by Maria Emelianova (chess.com), Anastasia Kharlovich (fide.org), Lennart Ootes.
The 2017 World Cup is coming to a close and there are so many possibilities of how this could affect the Candidates tournament. Macauley Peterson actually discussed the possibilities of who could make the tournament.
Of particular interest is the question of how the Isle of Man could potentially affect the average ratings of Kramnik and Caruana, who were elminated from Tbilisi after losing 9.2 and 5.2 rating points respectively. The pair are currently both precisely 2793.8 on the live ratings. But for the Candidates, the average of the monthly ratings over the entire calendar 2017 are what matter.
As of today, if nothing else changed between now and December, the average rating list would be as follows:
Caruana (2807)
So (2806)
Kramnik (2805)
concerning the route to 2018 Candidates Tournament
Video by Georgia Chess
MVL will most likely miss the rating cut-off and will try to get one of the two spots in Tbilisi. One thing is for sure… there will be no easy outs in these two matches as all are elite players. In these matches, they will be tough to predict. It would be interesting to see if players will play it safe in the classical and go for tiebreaks or try to be aggressive in the classical and steal the match.
In Aronian-MVL, both in great form and expect have their seconds working overtime to find a novelty. In So-Ding, the Chinese delegation is impressive and most likely are looking through So’s voluminous history. Many of the Chinese players still remain in Tbilisi to assist in that task. Both players still have a chance to qualify even if they don’t reach the finals.
Official Website: https://tbilisi2017.fide.com/
All PGN Games (TWIC): https://www.theweekinchess.com/
Rules and Regulations: https://tbilisi2017.fide.com/regulations/