FIDE Grand Prix 2017
The FIDE Grand Prix 2017 was a series of four chess tournaments that formed part of the qualification cycle for the World Chess Championship 2018. The top two finishers, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Alexander Grischuk, qualified to the 2018 Candidates Tournament.
Format
There were four tournaments in the cycle; each consisted of 18 players. 24 players were selected to compete in the tournaments, and each player competed in three of the four tournaments.In contrast to the previous editions where players played a full round-robin, each tournament was an 18 player, nine-round Swiss-system tournament. In each round players scored 1 point for a win, ½ point for a draw and 0 for a loss. Grand Prix points were then allocated according to each player's standing in the tournament, as shown in the table below.
Players
The Grand Prix consisted of 24 players. Two players qualified to be among the 24 by being finalists in the World Chess Championship 2016 match; four players qualified by reaching the semifinals of the Chess World Cup 2015, eight players qualified based on their ratings; one player qualified by participation in the Association of Chess Professionals, and finally nine players rated at least 2700 were nominated by Agon and FIDE.In an interview with Chessdom, Zurab Azmaiparashvili indicated various plusses and minuses with the new system, particularly that the nine "wild card" entries were less expensive than in previous versions. However, with few details available and many questions unanswered, he also was unsure of the professionality of Agon's approach.
At the FIDE General Assembly in September, Agon presented Vladimir Kramnik as having Russia as a national sponsor, which if true would have been the first time that he participated in the FIDE Grand Prix.
Any player who declined to participate in the Grand Prix was replaced by another player who was rated over 2700. Players who held an entry spot but did not enter the Grand Prix were: Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin from the World Chess Championship 2016, Fabiano Caruana, Viswanathan Anand, Veselin Topalov, Vladimir Kramnik, and Wesley So from the rating list.
| Invitee | Country | Qualifying method |
| Peter Svidler | Chess World Cup 2015 runner-up | |
| Pavel Eljanov | Chess World Cup 2015 semi-finalists | |
| Anish Giri | Chess World Cup 2015 semi-finalists | |
| Hikaru Nakamura | FIDE rating list | |
| Levon Aronian | FIDE rating list | |
| Ding Liren | FIDE rating list | |
| Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | FIDE rating list | |
| Alexander Grischuk | FIDE rating list | |
| Li Chao | FIDE rating list | |
| Pentala Harikrishna | FIDE rating list | |
| Shakhriyar Mamedyarov | FIDE rating list | |
| Dmitry Jakovenko | FIDE rating list | |
| Boris Gelfand | FIDE rating list | |
| Michael Adams | FIDE rating list | |
| Evgeny Tomashevsky | ACP Tour ranking | |
| Teimour Radjabov | organiser's nominees | |
| Ernesto Inarkiev | organiser's nominees | |
| Francisco Vallejo Pons | organiser's nominees | |
| Salem Saleh | organiser's nominees | |
| Hou Yifan | organiser's nominees | |
| Jon Ludvig Hammer | organiser's nominees | |
| Ian Nepomniachtchi | organiser's nominees | |
| Alexander Riazantsev | organiser's nominees | |
| Richárd Rapport | organiser's nominees | |
| - | - | organiser's nominees |
Prize money and Grand Prix points
The total prize money was €130,000 per single Grand Prix, or €520,000 for the total Grand Prix series. This money was allocated based on ranking in each individual tournament.Additionally, each player who could recruit a sponsor received €20,000.
| Place | Single Grand Prix event | Grand Prix points |
| 1 | €20,000 | 170 |
| 2 | €15,000 | 140 |
| 3 | €12,000 | 110 |
| 4 | €11,000 | 90 |
| 5 | €10,000 | 80 |
| 6 | €9,000 | 70 |
| 7 | €8,000 | 60 |
| 8 | €7,000 | 50 |
| 9 | €6,000 | 40 |
| 10 | €5,000 | 30 |
| 11 | €4,250 | 20 |
| 12 | €4,000 | 10 |
| 13 | €3,750 | 8 |
| 14 | €3,500 | 6 |
| 15 | €3,250 | 4 |
| 16 | €3,000 | 3 |
| 17 | €2,750 | 2 |
| 18 | €2,500 | 1 |
Tie breaks
With the objective of determining qualifiers to play in the Candidates Tournament 2018, and in the case that two or more players had equal cumulative points at the top, the following criteria were utilized to decide the overall Series winner and other overall placings:- Number of actual game result points scored in the three tournaments entered.
- Number of games played with black.
- Number of wins.
- Number of black wins.
- Drawing of lots.
Schedule
Originally the first event was to take place in October 2016, but it was moved to November 2017, with the other dates mostly the same.| No. | Host city | Date | |||||||||
| 1 |  Broadcasting boycottFIDE Grand Prix broadcasting rights belonged to Agon, which attempted to limit broadcasting of moves to its own website. In protest, chess24 refused to relay or mention the Grand Prix starting from Moscow 2017.Events crosstablesThe notation in the crosstable is the number of the opponent, color of pieces, and score. For example, in the top-left hand corner of the Sharjah 2017 crosstable, 16w½ indicates that in round 1, Grischuk played player 16 with the white pieces, and the game ended in a draw. The player numbers do not exactly correspond to finishing position; for instance Grischuk, Vachier-Lagrave and Mamedyarov all finished equal first, but are allocated numbers 1, 2 and 3 for convenience of notation.Palma 2017Going into the final tournament, only Radjabov and Vachier-Lagrave could overtake Mamedyarov or Grischuk to qualify for the Candidates.. Going into the final round of that tournament, both Radjabov and Vachier-Lagrave were equal 2nd-10th, and both would have qualified for the Candidates with a final round win, but neither was able to.Grand Prix standingsGrand Prix points in bold indicate a tournament win. Green indicates qualifiers for the Candidates Tournament 2018. Mamedyarov and Grischuk qualified via the Grand Prix. Ding Liren and Aronian qualified via the Chess World Cup 2017.
|
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov.png" />