Magnus Carlsen On Playing The World Cup (6:37) • 'Magnus Carlsen, World Chess Champion, discusses his participation in the FIDE World Cup in September in Tbilisi, Georgia.'
According to my records, Carlsen has played in knockout tournaments in three previous World Championship cycles:-
- 2004 FIDE Knockout World Championship • Lost rd.1 to Aronian. This was the last title tournament using the knockout format; Kasimdzhanov won.
- 2005 World Cup • Lost rd.4 to Bareev, but qualified for the Candidate matches, where he was eliminated in the first match by Aronian.
- 2007 World Cup • Lost rd.6 to Kamsky, who went on to win.
If he reaches the final of the 2017 World Cup, he will have prevented all 64 players in his half of the elimination matches from qualifying into the Candidate tournament.
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Most remarkably, Carlsen, had he won the World Cup, would have stopped most of his most serious challengers because his half of the draw turned out to contain the top 4 players on the September list and plenty of other serious contenders (thus, Vachier-Lagrave, Aronian, Kramnik, Karjakin, Grischuk, Ivanchuk, Svidler and Nepomniachtchi all found themselves in Carlsen's half.) Between them, they have just just about every World Championship in classical, rapid and blitz, plus World Cups, in the past several years.
The other half of the draw had the three top US players and not many other serious World Championship contenders (except, in retrospect, Ding).
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