Candidates’ tournaments have been held since 1950, with occasional breaks when they were replaced by matches. Winning the candidate tournament is the final hurdle to getting to the World Chess Championship match.
This year, on April 21, the candidate tournament was held in Toronto. Eight chess players were selected through different selection paths, who each played two games with each other in three weeks, finding out that the 17-year-old Indian Gukesh Dee or Gukesh Domaraju is the best and the youngest chess player who managed to win such a tournament. In the fall of 2024, the Indian got the right to compete in a match with the current world champion in classical chess Dina Liženė. It will be the first match for the title of world chess champion in which one of the participants will not be from Europe. Yes, Europeans are no longer the smartest in chess.
The first batch of the Toronto Candidates Tournament took place on April 4, when all participants of the tournament had successfully arrived in Canada. A few weeks before the start of the tournament, the Canadian authorities had not yet issued visas to the Indian and Russian chess players, but they were allowed to come at the last minute. Arkady Dvorkovich, the president of the International Chess Federation (FIDE), remained behind the plane, he was not granted a visa and had to watch the tournament remotely.
Tournament participants
One of the favorites was considered to be the neutral chess player from Russia, Jan Nepomniaschii, known by no one but Nepo. He qualified for the tournament, losing the match for the championship title to Dinas Liženės. The Indian, known by no one as Prag, qualified for the tournament along with Fabiano Caruana and Nijat Abassov, having played brilliantly in the World Cup of Chess. Another Indian, Vidit Gujrati, and the world’s leading YouTuber of chess content from the USA, Hikaru Nakamura, qualified from another tournament (FIDE Grand Swiss). Alireza Firouzdza, representing France, qualified as the winner of the highest rating, while the winner of the tournament, Gukesh, was in this company of chess players, as he showed the best results in the sum of several strong tournaments during the past year. I wouldn’t say that such a selection system is very simple, but the game of chess itself is not at all complicated.
Before the tournament, the main chess experts predicted nothing more for Gukesh than a place in the middle of the tournament table. The most likely winners included Caruana, who is simply very strong, and Nepo, who won the previous two candidate tournaments. Nepo was the leader in this tournament almost all the time, losing the leading position only at the very end of the tournament. Nakamura and Caruán were just a little short. Firuzja, who was predicted to have a good place, failed a little, but the Iranian with a French passport finished seventh. Chess experts were happy about the last place of Azerbaijani chess player Abasov, because this is exactly the place they predicted for him in the tournament at the beginning of the tournament. Abasov fought to a draw in seven games and lost all the others.
All chess games were broadcast on “YouTube” with comments by professional chess players. On average, one broadcast lasted five to six and a half hours. The chess games were broadcast with a 15-minute delay, roughly the amount of time it takes for light to travel from the Earth to the Sun and back. This time, however, the reason for the hold on the broadcast was the growing concern about cheating in chess.
Right now, any schoolboy with a phone in his pocket would win the Toronto candidate tournament by a landslide.
The last decisive round was already watched by 1.7 million viewers live on “Chess24” account on YouTube. After each game, one of the participants of the tournament, Hikaru Nakamura, posted a review of each game he played on his YouTube channel, stating that streaming is even more important to him than becoming the world chess champion. No normal chess player could believe that, but such words were said by an American chess player. Moreover, after one of the victories, he allowed himself to say that he plays in this tournament for pure pleasure, while the others suffer from increased stress and tension. In the end, very relaxed, Nakamura was able to win second place in the tournament. If, however, the current world champion Lizhen from China refuses to play the match, then Nakamura will be the next in line.
Prize money is not the point
Since chess players do not provide official declarations, it is necessary to tell how much money they received for participating in the tournament. Gukesh received 111,000 euros for the victory, the others received less, but all shared 500,000 euros. The prize fund is not gigantic, but bigger than in checkers. The money was raised by the International Chess Federation from sponsors, including the Sheinberg family, who made their fortune by creating and forcibly selling a poker site. The Sheinberg family didn’t stay without websites after parting ways with the poker site, as they partially own chess.com, the most popular chess site on the Internet.
Perhaps by pure coincidence and luck, the Candidates Tournament was held in Toronto, home of one of the Scheinberg family members, bringing the highest-level chess tournament to the Canadian city.
However, money is not the main thing for chess players in this tournament – it is a small unit in the candidate tournament. Three weeks of chess and 50-70 thousand euros – this is not worthy of a chess player. The real money and glory is in the championship match. In the previous match in 2023, the participants of the final divided two million euros among themselves brotherly, and the winner received 55%. An additional benefit is the honor of World Chess Champion, which automatically means that the champion’s photo will be framed and hung in every chess club in the world next to our Thal, the American Fischer, the Cuban Capablanca and others.
The classical chess tournament started on April 4. A classic chess game is long: at first, each player was given two hours for the first 40 moves, and then 30 minutes until the end of the game, adding up to 30 seconds for each move made, so that a chess game can last almost forever, or up to seven hours.
Usually, the games of classical chess are low-scoring, but in this tournament there were enough wins and losses for all the spectators.
The drama unfolded in literally every one of the 14 rounds of the tournament. For example, in the second round, all the games were productive – Gukesh won Praga, Vidit unexpectedly sacrificed a pawn to Nakamura and won, ending Nakamura’s streak of 47 unbeaten classical chess games, Nepo defeated Firuzja and Caruana defeated Abasov. Many games were difficult, with opponents trying to twist the other player’s head as much as possible. Everyone will remember the game of the seventh round between Hikaru and Nepo, where when playing the Russian game, the positions were so complicated that no one really understood what was happening on the chessboard. Nakamura played part of the game with a large advantage of pieces, but was unable to activate them as the game ended in a draw.
The outcome of a chess game is fixed with three results – 1:0, 0:1 or 0.5:0.5, symbolizing one point that is shared between the players. However, this does not capture the full drama that unfolds in the party. For example, if such a system of recording the result was used in football, then all that would be remembered about the legendary 1999 Champions League semi-final match between Turin “Juventus” and Manchester “United” would be that the English club won. But in reality, the Italians were leading 2-0, and then the English scored the three goals they needed to win the match. In chess, a player can play well the entire game, succeed 30, 40, 50, sometimes even 70 moves in a row, but make one mistake and the scoreboard will record a loss.
Spotlight – loud shoes
When everyone played one game with each other, the second round of the tournament began, where everyone played with everyone again, this time changing the color of the chess pieces. The second round of the tournament added tension, and the biggest scandal happened in it – Firuzja’s loud shoes!
In the match with Nepo, Firuzja wore a Versace shirt and struggled with increasing the lead on the chessboard. Then the judge of the tournament came to him and asked him to move around the hall a little more quietly and to think about whether it is possible to put on shoes that are not so loud for the next round. The chess world was surrounded by scandal. It turned out that Firouzja had worn these shoes before in other tournaments, and they had never been so loud. The incident caused so much emotional distress that Firuzja was unable to win a game, and the Iranian chess player’s father even threatened that his son would never play chess again. However, everything was evened out when it was pointed out that in the parallel women’s tournament, ladies walk in high heels and it does not bother anyone. By the way, China’s Tania Junyi won the women’s tournament.
Three rounds before the end of the tournament, the Indian chess player Vidit made a big mistake in the game against Nepo, losing in a tied position, giving half a point to the opponent, who took a one-man lead with 7 out of 11 points. The closest followers were half a point behind.12. in the round – two rounds before the end – the chess players turned on meat grinders mode. Nakamura beat Firouzdzu in the French defensive substitution, Gukesh beat Abasov and Caruana beat India’s Vidita, creating three leaders in the table with 7.5 points – Nakamura, Nepo, Gukesh.
In Round 13, the temperature reached an all-time high in Canada.
Gukesh very technically, playing the end almost for seconds, realized the advantage against Firuzdz. After the end of the game, with an indifferent expression on his face, he destroyed his and some of Firouja’s pieces, becoming the sole leader of the tournament.
Before the start of the game, Gukesh had 8.5 points, Caruán, Nepo and Nakamura had 8 points each. For maximum drama in the tournament, all four of these players faced each other in the final round. Nakamura with Gukesh and Caruana with Nepo.
In the last round on April 21, Caruana in the party with Nepo won the winning position in a complicated checkers top, but was unable to realize it. Immediately after the party ended, Nepo expressed his condolences for the outcome of the party, saying that “I’m very sorry.” If Caruana had won, then the winner of the tournament would be determined in additional games. Gukesh managed to draw with Nakamura, and as a result won the tournament, half a point ahead of his followers. Chess players are traditionally considered very smart people. However, in defiance of this tradition and thanks to the tragic outcome of the game, the first phrase that Fabiano said in the post-match interview after the undefeated game was: “I feel like an idiot.” On the other hand, Gukesh smiled for the first time during the tournament only at the press conference, when he was announced as the winner of the tournament.
The match for the title of world chess champion will take place at the end of 2024 – the place has not been announced yet, but it can be predicted that India will very much want to fight for the opportunity to organize the match at home,
because there is not much interest in chess in the country of the current Chinese world champion Ding Lizhen, but in India the popularity of chess is at an all-time high. Gukesh has good chances to become the youngest world champion in the history of chess and to return again to the Riga Technical University chess tournament, where he managed to win only 26th place three years ago. Maybe Gukesh will do better next time in Riga.
Tags: Contrary predictions chess dream fulfilled Indian Gukesh tournament contenders championship title Raksts
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