FIDE Grand Swiss Tournament 2019
The FIDE Grand Swiss Tournament 2019 was a chess tournament that formed part of the qualification cycle for the World Chess Championship 2021. It was played from 10–21 October 2019 on the Isle of Man. This was the first time that a tournament of this type was used as a qualifying tournament for the Candidates Tournament.
Wang Hao and Fabiano Caruana shared first place, with Wang Hao winning on tie breaks and thereby qualifying for the 2020–21 Candidates Tournament. Of the players who shared third place, Kirill Alekseenko had the best tie break and became eligible for the Candidates wild card as the next-highest placed non-qualifier, as Caruana had already qualified for the Candidates by virtue of being the runner-up in the previous World Championship. Alekseenko was later selected as the Candidates wild card.
The highest-placed female players were Harika Dronavalli and Dinara Saduakassova, with Harika winning the women's trophy on tie breaks.
Format
The tournament was an 11-round Swiss-system tournament, with 120 players invited by FIDE, including 100 qualifying by rating. 40 wildcards were invited by the organizers. The qualification by rating was based on the average of the 12 rating lists from July 2018 to June 2019. The list of qualifiers was published on 10 June 2019.The time control for the games was:
- Time limit of 100 minutes, + 50 minutes added after move 40, + 15 minutes added after move 60, + 30 second per move increment from move 1.
Tie breaks
In the event of a tie for first, the following tie breaks were applied, in order:- Average rating of opponents, Cut 1 ;
- Buchholz Cut 1 method: Average score of opponents, excluding the lowest scoring opponent;
- Buchholz method: Average score of opponents;
- Individual games between tied players;
- Drawing of lots.
Schedule
The first six rounds were played from 10 to 15 October, and the last five rounds from 17 to 21 October.- Round 1: 10 October — 3:00 p.m.
- Round 2: 11 October — 3:00 p.m.
- Round 3: 12 October — 3:00 p.m.
- Round 4: 13 October — 3:00 p.m.
- Round 5: 14 October — 3:00 p.m.
- Round 6: 15 October — 3:00 p.m.
- Rest day: 16 October
- Round 7: 17 October — 3:00 p.m.
- Round 8: 18 October — 3:00 p.m.
- Round 9: 19 October — 3:00 p.m.
- Round 10: 20 October — 3:00 p.m.
- Round 11: 21 October — 1:30 p.m.
Prize money
The prize money was $70,000 for the winner and $10,000 for the best woman.Participants and results
154 players played in the Grand Swiss. 118 players were from FIDE's qualification criteria and 36 players were wildcards chosen by the organizers.The participants, their FIDE ratings as of October 2019 and the results are listed here. The "Rank" column takes account of tie breaks.
| Rank | Name | Rating | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | Total |
| 1 |  Wang Hao| CHNtooltip|2=Andrey Esipenko, 2624|1|dotted=notooltip|2=Rauf Mamedov, 2645|1|dotted=notooltip|2=Bu Xiangzhi, 2721|1|dotted=notooltip|2=Fabiano Caruana, 2812|½|dotted=notooltip|2=Parham Maghsoodloo, 2664|½|dotted=notooltip|2=Luke McShane, 2682|1|dotted=notooltip|2=Levon Aronian, 2758|0|dotted=notooltip|2=Magnus Carlsen, 2876|½|dotted=notooltip|2=Nikita Vitiugov, 2732|½|dotted=notooltip|2=Viswanathan Anand, 2765|1|dotted=notooltip|2=David Howell, 2694|1|dotted=no |