Grand Chess Tour 2017

Grand Chess Tour 2017 was a circuit of chess tournaments, which was the third edition of Grand Chess Tour. It took place from June 21 to December 12, 2017, and was won by reigning World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen.

Format

The tour consisted of five events, including three fast chess and two classical events. Scoring system looked as follows:

Lineup

The tour consisted of nine regular players, who were selected to participate based on different criteria, including performance in previous edition, average rating for last twelve months, URS rating and invitation by organizers. Almost all invitees accepted, with only exception being former world champion Vladimir Kramnik, who refused to participate due to busy schedule.

Player	Country	Rating	Qualification method
Wesley So		2808	Winner of Grand Chess Tour 2016
Hikaru Nakamura		2785	Runner-up of Grand Chess Tour 2016
Fabiano Caruana		2827	Third place in Grand Chess Tour 2016
Magnus Carlsen		2840	Average FIDE rating
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave		2796	Average FIDE rating
Ian Nepomniachtchi		2767	URS
Sergey Karjakin		2785	URS
Viswanathan Anand		2786	Wildcard
Levon Aronian		2780	Replacement for Vladimir Kramnik

Tournaments

Paris

2017 Grand Chess Tour opened with Paris Rapid and Blitz event. It was won by Magnus Carlsen, who defeated Maxime Vachier-Lagrave on tie-break.

Leuven

Leuven Grand Chess Tour took place from June 28 to July 2 in Leuven, Belgium. As well as previous event, it was won by Magnus Carlsen.

Saint Louis Rapid and Blitz

The inaugural Saint Louis Rapid and Blitz was the fourth leg of 2017 Grand Chess Tour and took place in Saint Louis Chess Club from August 13 to August 19. It brought some attention from the media due to participation of former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov, who has retired from competitive chess in 2005, 12 years prior to the event. He represented Croatia at the tournament.