Anand, Ju Wenjun In Action As WR Masters Returns In London, Dubai, Dusseldorf
Former World Champion Viswanathan Anand will be joined by Women's World Champion Ju Wenjun and 14 more top players for the WR Chess Masters Cup, a 16-player knockout in London that runs October 14-18. That's just the start of a month of chess, with an eight-player WR Chess Masters in Dubai (October 31-November 3) before the $4 million WR Chess Masters High Roller on November 21st in Dusseldorf. GM Ian Nepomniachtchi is the one player set to play all three events.
The inaugural WR Masters in February 2023 was won by GM Levon Aronian, who triumphed in a playoff against the then and future world championship challengers, Nepomniachtchi and GM Gukesh Dommaraju.
It seemed the event might be a one-hit wonder when there was no repeat in early 2024, but then not one, but three (and counting) events were announced. The one that has understandably taken all the headlines is the $1 million buy-in High Roller tournament, for which GMs Nepomniachtchi, Fabiano Caruana, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, and Hans Niemann have all found investors. That provides an unprecedented $2 million top prize, but third place will be losing $600,000, while the player in last place gets nothing and so loses a full $1 million. (The organizer takes a "house rake" of $100,000.)
The time control for the High Roller event is 15+0 i.e. 15 minutes per player for the entire game, with no increment added after a move, so that we could see a $2 million swing resting on flying pieces in a time scramble.
The time control for the two other events is also unusual, with 60 minutes for 30 moves, then 30 minutes for 20 moves, then 30 minutes until the end of the game. It seems there's also no increment, so that the maximum length of a game will be four hours—two hours for each player.
That's necessary, since the plan is to play two classical games a day. Let's start with the smaller event.
WR Chess Masters, October 31-November 3, Dubai, UAE
| # | Name | FED | Age | Rating (June 2024) | World Rank |
| 1 | Ian Nepomniachtchi | 33 | 2770 | 4 | |
| 2 | Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu | 18 | 2747 | 13 | |
| 3 | Anish Giri | 29 | 2745 | 14 | |
| 4 | Jan-Krzysztof Duda | 26 | 2733 | 18 | |
| 5 | Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | 33 | 2732 | 19 | |
| 6 | Vidit Gujrathi | 29 | 2721 | 24 | |
| 7 | Alexander Grischuk | 40 | 2719 | 25 | |
| 8 | Yu Yangyi | 30 | 2715 | 26 |
In 2023, the WR Chess Masters was a 10-player single round-robin. In 2024 it's been cut to eight players and just four days, with two games a day for the first three days and one on the last. The top-four seeds GMs Nepomniachtchi, Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, Anish Giri, and Jan-Krzysztof Duda are the only players returning from the first event. It's a curiosity that the average age is a high 30, with Praggnanandhaa the only representative of the new generation of chess talent.
One sub-plot will be the FIDE Circuit, with players competing for points and potentially a spot in the 2026 Candidates Tournament that decides the next world championship challenger. Clear first would earn 25.85 (at current ratings), just a point short of how much Gukesh earned for winning the Candidates.
We are excited to announce that both the WR Chess Masters Cup🇬🇧 and the WR Chess Masters🇦🇪 have been officially included in the FIDE Circuit!
— WR_Chess_Masters (@wr_chess) May 14, 2024
We hope that our events will be crucial in the qualification path to the World Championship👑 #wrchess #chess
A sole winner of the other tournament, however, will earn 27.5 points, since the top-eight players—the ones who count for calculating circuit points—are even stronger.
WR Chess Masters Cup, October 14-18, London, UK
| Name | FED | Age | Rating (June 2024) | World Rank | |
| 1 | Ian Nepomniachtchi | 33 | 2770 | 4 | |
| 2 | Nodirbek Abdusattorov | 19 | 2766 | 5 | |
| 3 | Arjun Erigaisi | 20 | 2761 | 8 | |
| 4 | Viswanathan Anand | 54 | 2751 | 11 | |
| 5 | Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu | 18 | 2747 | 13 | |
| 6 | Anish Giri | 29 | 2745 | 14 | |
| 7 | Jan-Krzysztof Duda | 26 | 2733 | 18 | |
| 8 | Veselin Topalov | 49 | 2727 | 22 | |
| 9 | Vidit Gujrathi | 29 | 2721 | 24 | |
| 10 | Daniil Dubov | 28 | 2701 | 28 | |
| 11 | Nikita Vitiugov | 37 | 2688 | 40 | |
| 12 | Andrey Esipenko | 22 | 2677 | 52 | |
| 13 | Raunak Sadhwani | 18 | 2641 | 101 | |
| 14 | Victor Bologan | 52 | 2598 | 190 | |
| 15 | Ju Wenjun | 33 | 2558 | 338 | |
| 16 | Alexandra Kosteniuk | 40 | 2501 | 633 |
The Cup features four players who are currently top-10 on the live rating list, including the seemingly unstoppable GM Arjun Erigaisi. 15th World Chess Champion Anand has been tempted back into action...
I am looking forward to competing in the WR Chess Masters Cup, taking place from October 14th to 18th. Looking forward to see some great games.@wr_chess
— Viswanathan Anand (@vishy64theking) May 26, 2024
...while the 16-player field has provided space to invite both Women's World Champion Ju Wenjun and GM Alexandra Kosteniuk.
The format is a knockout tournament with two fast classical games followed, if needed, by a single armageddon game, where the players will bid for the lowest amount of time they're willing to play to have the black pieces and only need a draw.
🇬🇧 Stay tuned for updates on the WR Chess Masters Cup, taking place from October 14th to 18th at one of London's most exclusive venues!
— Wadim Rosenstein (@WadimRosenstein) May 8, 2024
It will be an intense elimination tournament with a K.O. System of best-of-two games 🏆
Time control:
⏱️ 60 min for the first 30 moves, 30 min… pic.twitter.com/Rj5dKXguWT
One other related event deserves a mention.
FIDE World Rapid & Blitz Team Championships, August 1-6, Astana, Kazakhstan
Wadim Rosenstein, a businessman who moved with his family from Russia to Germany as a child, is the "WR" in the title of the tournaments. In 2023 his WR Logistics was the main sponsor for the FIDE World Rapid Team Championship in Dusseldorf, an event that featured an amateur board (<2000 Elo) and saw the sponsor become a world champion.
not quite the way I imagined https://t.co/6StZ7rF5KM
— Ian Nepomniachtchi (@lachesisq) August 28, 2023
This year Rosenstein has an excellent chance not only to defend that title but pick up a new one, since world number-one Magnus Carlsen has been added to the WR Chess Team lineup, while there's also now a World Blitz Team Championship to go with the Rapid.
Dear chess friends!
— Wadim Rosenstein (@WadimRosenstein) February 29, 2024
We are going to defend our world championship title this year in August.
We challenge everyone to try to beat us!
Stay tuned and wait for further official information from @FIDE_chess
Our friend and team member Wesley So will unfortunately not be able to… pic.twitter.com/tW2CYb1TJQ
The general sponsor this time is not WR Logistics but FIDE's other main new sponsor since the cancellation of Russian sponsorship deals, Freedom Holding. Its CEO, Timur Turlov, renounced his Russian citizenship to become a Kazakh citizen after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The event will take place August 1-6 in Astana, Kazakhstan, with Team China another to watch—their line-up is set to include both chess World Champions, Ju and Ding Liren.
Register for the World Rapid and Blitz Team Championships and get the chance to play against the World Champions! 🔥 🏆
— International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) June 8, 2024
🇨🇳 Meet "China Team for 10 years", where World Champions Ding Liren and Ju Wenjun, together with Yu Yangyi, Wei Yi, Xu Xiangyu and Bo Pang, will fight for one… pic.twitter.com/mB13xV9Je9
There's a packed chess schedule for the second half of 2024!
Colin McGourty led news at Chess24 from its launch until it merged with Chess.com a decade later. An amateur player, he got into chess writing when he set up the website Chess in Translation after previously studying Slavic languages and literature in St. Andrews, Odesa, Oxford, and Krakow.
