Thursday 26 December 2019

2019 World Blitz and Rapid

The 2019 World Blitz and Rapid is starting tomorrow in Moscow. Of course these means that the players taking part had to send at least part of the Christmas in transit, as the opening ceremony is this evening (Moscow time).
Apart from the players taking part (Carlsen, MVKL, Aronian etc) there are a couple of other points of interest.
Firstly, Carlsen isn't the top seed in the Blitz, with that honour going to Nakamura. This is because each event is seeded with the rating list matching the event. As a result the bottom seed in the Rapid is GM D Gukesh from India, who still has a rapid rating of 1799!
Secondly, GM Alireza Firouzja is playing under the FIDE flag, instead of the Iranian one. This is due to the Iranian governments policy of not allowing athletes to compete against players from Israel. So as to compete in this tournament (and not be forced to default games against Israeli players), Firouzja has left the Iranian Federation with a view to changing to a new one shortly.

4 comments:

Xoyepa said...

I wonder if the other Iranian players will follow his example. Losing to an entire federation is a huge crutch in any open tournament, the government really shouldn’t be like that...

Xoyepa said...

also a small typo, you said MVK instead of MVL

Anonymous said...

Firouza did not say that he stopped playing for Iran because of the Israel ban - that is purely media speculation.

Shaun Press said...

Thanks Xoyepa, now corrected!