Candidates Tournament 2022

Candidates Tournament 2022
Ian Nepomniachtchi, the winner of the tournament, advanced to the World Chess Championship 2023 match.
VenuePalacio de Santoña[1]
LocationMadrid, Spain
Dates16 June – 5 July 2022
Competitors8 from 7 nations
Winning score9.5 points of 14
Champion
FIDE Ian Nepomniachtchi
2024 →

The 2022 Candidates Tournament was an eight-player chess tournament to decide the challenger for the World Chess Championship 2023. The tournament took place at the Palacio de Santoña in Madrid, Spain, from June 16 to July 5, 2022,[2] with the World Championship finishing in April 2023.[3] As with every Candidates tournament since 2013, it was a double round-robin tournament.[4]

The eight qualifiers were Ian Nepomniachtchi, Teimour Radjabov, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Alireza Firouzja, Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Richárd Rapport, and Ding Liren. Sergey Karjakin was originally a qualifier, but was disqualified for breaching the FIDE Code of Ethics after publicly expressing approval of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Karjakin was replaced by Ding, the highest-rated player who had not yet qualified.

Nepomniachtchi won the tournament undefeated with a round to spare and the highest score in any Candidates tournament since the modern format was introduced in 2013.[5] This made him one of five players to win consecutive Candidates, the others being Vasily Smyslov, Boris Spassky, Viktor Korchnoi, and Anatoly Karpov. (Of these, only Smyslov and Nepomniachtchi achieved this when the Candidates were organised as a tournament, rather than a series of matches.)[6] Ding ended up in second place, having pulled off a last-round victory against Nakamura who failed to hold the game to a draw that would have seen him finish in second place instead.

Nepomniachtchi was scheduled to play a match against Magnus Carlsen for the World Chess Championship. But after the tournament, Carlsen confirmed that he would not play,[7] which he already had announced as likely after the World Chess Championship 2021.[8] Instead Nepomniachtchi played Ding, the second-place finisher, for the world championship.[9]

  1. ^ "FIDE Candidates 2022 venue and schedule announced". FIDE. March 21, 2022. Retrieved March 21, 2022.
  2. ^ FIDE Candidates 2022: Venue and schedule announced, Chessbase, March 28, 2022
  3. ^ Barden, Leonard (17 December 2021). "Carlsen's doubts over title defence leave chess facing uncertain future". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 June 2022.
  4. ^ Regulations for the FIDE Candidates Tournament 2022, (PDF) FIDE
  5. ^ Doggers (PeterDoggers), Peter (3 July 2022). "Ding Beats Nakamura To Finish 2nd Behind Nepomniachtchi; Radjabov Claims 3rd Place". Chess.com. Retrieved 2022-07-04.
  6. ^ "Nepomniachtchi Wins Candidates Tournament with Round to Spare". 3 July 2022.
  7. ^ Doggers, Peter (2022-07-20). "BREAKING: Carlsen Not To Defend World Title". Chess.com. Retrieved 2022-07-20.
  8. ^ Redford, Patrick (2021-12-21). "Magnus Carlsen Says He'll Only Defend His Title Against Teenage Genius Alireza Firouzja". defector.com. Retrieved 2022-07-26.
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference WC23rules was invoked but never defined (see the help page).