Baku to host 1st stage of Chess Grand Prix series from October, 2014

Capital Baku will host the 1st stage of the FIDE Grand Prix, starting from October 1 and running till October 15, AzerTag reports.Azerbaijan`s GMs Shahriyar Mammadyarov and Teymur Rajabov are among the top sixteen players: 11 qualified according to the rules, one player from each country organizer and one FIDE president nominee.The list of 11 participants is Magnus Carlsen (world champion), Vishy Anand (world championship match participant 2013), Vladimir Kramnik (world cup winner 2013), Dmitry Andreikin (world cup runner-up 2013), Evgeny Tomashevsky (world cup semi-finalist 2013), Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (world cup semi-finalist 2013), Fabiano Caruana, Alexander Grischuk, Hikaru Nakamura and others.The FIDE Grand Prix 2014–15 is a series of four chess tournaments that form part of the qualification cycle for the World Chess Championship 2016. Each player will play in 3 tournaments and all his results will be taken into account for the overall final standings of the Grand-Prix.The top two winners will qualify to the 2016 Candidates Tournament. In contrast to the two previous Grand Prix cycles the number of tournaments was decreased from six to four and players playing just three tournaments.Each tournament is a 12-player, single round-robin 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: 170 Grand Prix points for first place, 140 for second place, 110 for third place, and then 90 down to 10 points by steps of 10. In case of a tie in points the Grand Prix points are shared evenly by the tied players.The second stage should soon follow in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, from Oct 20 to Nov 3, while the third and the fourth stages will be held in Tehran, Iran from Feb 14 to 28, 2015 and Moscow, Russia from May 13 to 27, 2015, respectively.Baku earlier hosted FIDE Grand Prix in April-May, 2008. The winner of the stage was late Azerbaijani grandmaster Vugar Gashimov.Bakudaily.Az