2016 Candidates, Moscow

I created a new page for the 2016 Candidates Tournament, scheduled for March 2016 in Moscow. For now the page has only a couple of links to FIDE.com announcements like 2016 FIDE World Chess Candidates Tournament:-

According to FIDE regulations, the list of players includes the top two performers from the 2014-2015 Grand Prix: Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana (both of the USA); the winner and runner-up of the 2015 World Cup, Sergey Karjakin and Peter Svidler (both of Russia); as well as the loser of the 2014 World Chess Championship match, Viswanathan Anand of India; Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria and Anish Giri of the Netherlands, based on their 2015 FIDE ratings are likely to have qualified to participate. The eighth and final participant is Levon Aronian of Armenia, who was chosen as Wild Card entry by the Organizers.

Another paragraph informs that Agon is still very much part of the story.

About World Chess by Agon Limited: Agon Limited is the official partner of World Chess Federation (FIDE) and owner of commercial rights to the World Chess Championship cycle. The company aims to develop and commercialize chess, create favorable environment for partners, players, and brands, and to significantly expand the broadcast coverage of the sport. With this in mind the company introduces World Chess brand, targeting 600+ million chess players and spectators all over the world.

Agon became owner of commercial rights in 2012. The company successfully managed the 2012-2013 Grand Prix cycle, the 2014 World Championship Match, and the 2015 Rapid and Blitz World Championships. For commercial and partnership opportunities, please visit www.agonlimited.com.

The last time I recall covering Agon was on my main blog during last year's World Championship match, Carlsen - Anand II : Rumblings (November 2014). The post started,

Pre-match Press Conference: Who was that fellow sitting to the right of the match stakeholders? Introduced as 'the organizer of the tournament, Ilya Merenzon', this was the first time I had become aware of him.

Agon also received a subsequent mention on this WCC blog in 2014 FIDE General Assembly : Whither the World Championship? (December 2014).

Then let's hear from the Presidential Board in November about forthcoming events. • 4.5. Agon. Annex 13 is a letter from Agon with a change in the Agon/FIDE interface team. [...] I don't have much to add here. It's Christmas Eve and there are better things to do!

Christmas is long past, so let's look at that letter, which is dated 17 September 2014.

'The Chairman' was identified as Mr. L. Buckley assisted by Mrs. C. Farrow as secretary. Mentioned in the clipping are Andrew Paulson, Ilya Merenzon, and Matvey Shekhovtsov. Now that we know the Agon cast of characters, we can continue with the story.

21st World Computer Championship

I added the PGN and crosstable for the 21st World Computer Championship (WCCC) held in Leiden (Netherlands) to my page on the World Computer Chess Championship. Just like the previous event (see 20th World Computer Championship), both files are packed into a single ZIP file. For more about the event, see

• WCCC 2015 [ICGA] and
• WCCC 2015 [chessprogramming.wikispaces.com].

The ICGA has announced next year's competition in ICGA Events 2016 in Leiden, including

• The World Computer Chess Championship,
• The World Computer Software Championship, and
• The Speed Computer Chess Championship.

These events might better be named 'The ICGA Computer Chess Championship', etc. A few days ago I posted TCEC Season 8 Superfinal in Progress on my main blog. Many (most?) people who follow computer chess now consider the TCEC events to be the real World Computer Chess Championship.

Having said that, in round 5 of the 21st WCCC, the eventual winner of the event (Jonny) managed to beat the winner of TCEC Season 7 (Komodo). The two engines finished 1-2 in the final standings at Leiden.

CAM Subzonals

In 2005 I gave myself the goal of documenting the World Chess Championship Zonals. Since the early days of the project there have been a number of events -- I call them the Central American Subzonals -- that I wasn't sure how to treat. The first of these on my zonal index was for cycle 15...

Zone 8 subzonal?; Pinar del Rio CUB; 1990-00

...after which there were seven more. I finally decided to delete them all ('hide' would be a better verb), so I updated the zonal index to reflect this decision.

The index now lists 451 events, of which 414 represent zonals and 37 represent the next stage of a cycle, e.g. an Interzonal. The current list of Central American zonals is shown below.

Central American (CAM) Zonals

End of story? No, not quite. Although that first subzonal reference was from 1990 and the first from Rafael Santana's site is TORNEO FIDE ZONA 8 (VIII) – CALI, 1990, a 2008 post on this blog, appropriately titled Subzonals, mentions a 1985 San Juan (Puerto Rico) event. I'll tackle that some other time.

2015-2016 Women's Grand Prix, Monte Carlo

For my previous post, CAM Zonals, Women's Events, and C27 Zonals, I created a new page for the 2015-2016 FIDE Women's Grand Prix. For this post, I added the first leg of the event, held at Monte Carlo in Monaco. The second leg of the Grand Prix is scheduled for February 2016 in Kish, Iran.

For the Grand Prix from the previous cycle, see 2013-2014 FIDE Women's Grand Prix. For the corresponding post on this blog, see 2013-2014 Women's Grand Prix, the Players.

CAM Zonals, Women's Events, and C27 Zonals

The last time I mentioned Rafael Santana of Venezuela on this blog was in More CAM Zonals, where CAM means Central America. He has since completed two more zonal pages on his own site, which I incorporated into

• C11: Zonals 1978-1981, and
• C12: Zonals 1981-1984

A few years ago, the CAM zonals were among the least documented events on my page for the World Championship Zonals. Now, thanks to Rafael, they are among the most documented.

***

I also updated my index for the World Championship for Women. First I added a new page for the 2015-2016 FIDE Women's Grand Prix; the first event has already finished and I'll add it ASAP. Then I updated my page on the 2015 Hou Yifan - M.Muzychuk Title Match; the event is now scheduled for March 2016 in Lviv, Ukraine.

***

After my first post last month on the C27 Zonals (the current cycle), I realized I had made several mistakes regarding the African zonals. I added a correction to that post.

2015 World Cup Players

Continuing with 2015 World Cup Results, I added the PGN file to my page on the 2015 Baku World Cup. I also added the 128 players to my World Chess Championship : Index of players. A quick count indicates that there were 36 players participating in their first World Championship event at this level.

2015 World Cup Results

I added crosstables for the recently completed Baku event to my page on the 2015 World Cup. For the first time I was able to follow the tournament as it evolved into the final mini-match between GMs Karjakin and Svidler.

Congratulations to both for qualifying into the forthcoming Candidates tournament and to GM Karjakin for winning the World Cup.

I still have a few actions to perform:-

• Add the PGN game scores, but first I have to correct a few errors I found in the source data.
  
  
• Add an explanation of the tiebreaks used. For the 2013 World Cup, I simply pointed to the page for the 2011 event. I plan to do the same for the 2015 event, but I should first confirm that the tiebreak systems were the same for all three events. My post on the Evolution of the FIDE Knockouts suggests that the formats were equivalent.
  
  
• Add the 128 players to the Index of players.

Now that the event belongs to history, I would like to consider World Champion Carlsen's suggestion that the format be used for future World Championships.

***

Later: For the follow-up actions, see 2015 World Cup Players and 2015 World Cup Tiebreak.