The 2024 WR Chess Masters Cup will take place from 14-18 October in London, England. The tournament gathers 16 world’s best players and will be played as a knockout, with two games per day and the fastest possible classical time control (60 min for the first 30 moves, 30 min for the next 20 moves and 30 min for the rest of the game).
In case of a tie after the two games, the winner will be decided through a bidding Armageddon tiebreaker, where players secretly bid for time. The player with the lower bid will play Black and only needs a draw to win, while White must win with 15 minutes on the clock.
The initial list of players was published a few months ago, but got updated, and according to the latest information the participants are:
- Arjun Erigaisi (India)
- Alireza Firouzja (France)
- Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Uzbekistan)
- Ian Nepomniachtchi (FIDE)
- Viswanathan Anand (India)
- Praggnanandhaa R (India)
- Jan-Krzysztof Duda (Poland)
- Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria)
- Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France)
- Vidit Santosh Gujrathi (India)
- Daniil Dubov (FIDE)
- Javokhir Sindarov (Uzbekistan)
- Raunak Sadhwani (India)
- Victor Bologan (Moldova)
- Shreyas Royal (England)
- Alexandra Kosteniuk (Switzerland)
Anish Giri, Nikita Vitiugov, Andrei Esipenko and Ju Wenjun who were on the initial starting list were replaced by Maxim Vachier-Lagrave, Shreyas Royal, Alireza Firouzja, and Javokhir Sindarov (respectively).
Interestingly, the WR Chess Masters Cup was supposed to be an intro event for the WR Chess Masters in Dubai. WR Masters Dubai was scheduled for 31 October – 3 November, but the event got cancelled without additional information and the new dates are expected to be published soon. Earlier this year, Wadim Rosenstein, the founder of WR Group, supposed to organize a WR Chess Masters High Roller with $1 million buy-inย and Hans Niemann, Fabiano Caruana, Ian Nepomniachtchi, and Nodirbek Abdusattorov in the field. However, this tournament was also cancelled.