Berlin has emerged the favorite city for chess lovers to host one of the elite series of the World Chess Championship circuit.
Selected jointly by the gaming event company World Chess, and the chess community comprising more than 4,000 votes - Berlin will host the Grand Prix Series along with other chess events in 2022. The runners-up in the voting are Sao Paulo and London.
The series is scheduled from February to April 2022
Time to Say Berlin
It is the ‘first-ever’ in the history of chess that the global chess community got actively involved in deciding the chess capital of the year. The voters included chess federations, organizers of the event and chess players. The voting period of two weeks witnessed an overwhelming response thanks to the surging popularity of the game both online and offline.
As for Berlin, the city is no new-face to chess events. The sport is popular with around 23% playing the game. The earliest association of the city with the ancient board game is in 1910 when it hosted two World Chess Championships. Berlin was also the host city for the World Rapid & Blitz Championship and the Candidates Tournament in 2015 and 2018 respectively.
Read more on European cities that are cradles for the ancient sport
The Berlin Grand Prix Series will launch a new cycle for the World Chess Championship. The design theme for the Series is inspired from Magnus Carlsen’s famous tweet “Time to Say Dubai”. He tweeted the slogan after hearing the name of his challenger for the World Chess Championship that is scheduled for November, in Dubai.
The Berlin theme design showcases the archetypes of the city and reflects its true spirits. The design is enriched by the chessboard and graffiti-style typeface. Ilya Merenzon, CEO, World Chess has remarked that Berlin will not only be hosting the gala event for 3 months but also open doors as a permanent spot for future chess events.
The Grand Prix Series
The FIDE Grand Prix Series is a biennial chess tournament series. It is co-organized by FIDE and Agon, the commercial partner for FIDE. The series has three to six chess tournaments each which are part of the qualification rounds for the World Chess Championship or Women's World Chess Championship.
The first Grand Prix was played in 2008 and had Magnus Carlsen and Michael Adams withdraw due to changes in incentives for the World Chess Championship.
Though the first two Grand Prix series had six tournaments, the later ones in 2014–2015 consisted of only four. Also there were issues getting sponsors and often, announced host cities had to be changed eventually.
The 2022 Series will have 24 players with 16 in each round. Each of them will participate in two out of three tournaments. And every event will have a group stage, followed by a knock-out round. The group stage will have a round-robin tournament with six rounds. The number of classical games has been reformed based on the response from the chess community. The first round of every competition will have six classical games thus eliminating possibilities of random results. This arrangement guarantees that players who consistently score high progress to the next levels.
The prize fund for each event is EUR 150,000, which is a EUR 20,000 increase from 2019. Three events will comprise the 2022 Grand Prix, set to happen between February and April of next year. Each event of the Grand Prix will consist of a round-robin group stage followed by a knockout stage. The total prize fund for the Grand Prix is €350,000, with €150,000 for each event.
The criteria for qualification to the Series has also undergone changes, with an increased number of players. 16 out of 24 players will qualify for entry into the World Cup and Grand Swiss. The rest of the players will be chosen based on rating, and two will be nominated by the organizers - World Chess and FIDE.
The events are scheduled for the first half of 2022. This will allow sufficient time for the Candidates Tournament that also falls in 2022.
According to FIDE President, Arkady Dvorkovich, FIDE strives to bring top-notch chess events to world cities to a global audience. Ullrich Krause, President of the German Chess Federation, stated that the 45 days of the event will be turned into a grand chess festival throughout the city for international audiences.
The winner of the Grand Prix (and sometimes lower finishers) gets entry to the Candidates Tournament. The winner of the women's cycle is directly qualified to a championship match.
The Grand Prix Series 2022 has global giants like Algorand and Kaspersky as its Official Blockchain Partner and official Cybersecurity Partner respectively.
Conclusion
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