Pairings for World Cup 2017 released

by Sagar Shah - 07/08/2017

The World Cup 2017 is going to be held from the 2nd of September to 29th of September in the city of Tbilisi in Georgia. Top two finishers from this 128-player knock-out event will qualify to the Candidates 2018. Seven Indians have qualified for the tournament. They are Vishy Anand, Pentala Harikrishna, Vidit Gujrathi, B. Adhiban, S.P. Sethuraman, Deep Sengupta and Karthikeyan Murali. On 7th of August FIDE released the pairings of the event, which we present to you.

Vishy Anand to face Malaysian number one Yeoh Li Tian

It's going to be an exciting World Cup for Indian fans. Especially because we have seven players competing in this 128 player knock out event and also as ChessBase India's Sagar Shah and Amruta Mokal will be at the venue bringing in-depth coverage. FIDE released the pairings for the World Cup today, and this is how it looks:

Vishy Anand - Yeoh Li Tian (2478)
Harikrishna Pentala - Gonzalez Yuri Vidal (2543)
Vidit Gujrathi - Delgado Ramirez Neuris (2614)
Adhiban Baskaran - Nguyen Ngoc Truongson (2629)
Sethuraman S.P - Ruslan Ponomariov (2692)
Deep Sengupta - Wang Hao (2702)
Karthikeyan Murali - Francesco Vallejo Pons (2717)

Pairings for the upper half

Pairings for bottom half

Four of our players Anand, Harikrishna, Vidit and Adhiban face opponents lower rated than them. While Sethuraman, Deep and Karthikeyan are up against higher rated opponents. But given the unpredictable format of the tournament - two classical games followed by rapid and blitz tie-breakers, it is extremely difficult to make any predictions.

The inclusion of Magnus Carlsen at the tournament has made things very interesting! 19 out of the top 20 rated players in the world are participating in this event, making it a truly world class tournament.

The seven Indians at the event.

Anand and Hari made it thanks to their Elo ratings. Sethu won the Asian Continental 2016 while Deep finished fifth in that same event. Vidit managed third spot in Asian Continental 2017 to qualify. Karthikeyan Murali is the reigning National Champion and Adhiban received the FIDE President's wild card nomination.

ChessBase India will bring you high class coverage as author Sagar Shah and photographer Amruta Mokal will be present in Tbilisi, Georgia for the entire duration of the tournament.

Check out the pairings on the FIDE website