Candidates Tournament 2024 Open

The 2024 Candidates Tournament will be an eight-player chess tournament, held to determine the challenger for the World Chess Championship 2024. It is scheduled to take place at The Great Hall in Toronto, Canada, from April 3–22, 2024.

As with every Candidates tournament since 2013, it will be a double round-robin tournament. The winner of the tournament will earn the right to play the World Chess Championship 2024 against the current World Chess Champion Ding Liren.

Despite qualifying for the Candidates Tournament by winning the 2023 FIDE World Cup, former World Champion Magnus Carlsen decided not to compete in Toronto. He had previously stated his disinclination after reaching the semifinals of the World Cup, stating that "under the current format there is absolutely no chance" he will play the Candidates. In January 2024, after official confirmation of the candidates list, Magnus Carlsen formally confirmed his decision to decline FIDE's invitation to play in the Candidates Tournament by stating "I would say the main reason is that I don't enjoy it. It's as simple as that. As a result, Nijat Abasov, who finished fourth at the World Cup, qualified to the Candidates Tournament 2024 as Carlsen's replacement.

The tournament is an eight-player, double round-robin tournament, meaning there are 14 rounds with each player facing the others twice: once with the black pieces and once with the white pieces. The tournament winner will qualify to play Ding Liren for the World Championship in 2024.
Players from the same federation are required to play each other in the first rounds of each half to avoid collusion. The players affected in the 2024 Candidates are R Praggnanandhaa, Vidit Gujrathi and Gukesh D from India, and Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura from the United States. The former three will face one another in rounds 1–3 and 8–10, while the latter two will face each other in rounds 1 and 8.

Regulations[edit]

The time control is 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, then 30 minutes for the rest of the game, plus a 30-second increment per move starting from move 41. Players get 1 point for a win, ½ point for a draw and 0 points for a loss.
Tiebreaks for the first place are addressed as follows:

• Players would play two rapid chess games at 15 minutes plus 10 seconds per move. If a three- to six-way tie had occurred, a single round-robin would be played. If seven or eight players had been tied, a single round-robin would be played with a time limit of 10 minutes plus 5 seconds per move.
• If any players had still been tied for first after the rapid chess games, they would play two blitz chess games at 3 minutes plus 2 seconds per move. In the case of more than two players being tied, a single round-robin would be played.
• If any players were still tied for first after these blitz chess games, the remaining players would play a knock-out blitz tournament at the same time control. In each mini-match of the proposed knock-out tournament, the first player to win a game would win the mini-match.

Ties for places other than first will be broken by, in order: (1) Sonneborn–Berger score; (2) total number of wins; (3) head-to-head score among tied players; (4) drawing of lots.
The prize money is €48,000 for first place, €36,000 for second place, and €24,000 for third place (with players on the same number of points sharing prize money, irrespective of tie-breaks), plus €3,500 per half-point for every player, for a total prize pool of €500,000.

Qualification method	Player	Age	Rating	Worldranking
2023 World Championship runner-up	Ian Nepomniachtchi[a]	33	2758	7
The top three finishers in the Chess World Cup 2023[b]	Magnus Carlsen (winner, withdrew)	33	2830	1
R Praggnanandhaa (runner-up)	18	2747	14
Fabiano Caruana (third place)	31	2803	2
Nijat Abasov (fourth place, replacement for Carlsen)	28	2632	114
The top two finishers in the FIDE Grand Swiss Tournament 2023	Vidit Gujrathi (winner)	29	2727	25
Hikaru Nakamura (runner-up)	36	2789	3
The winner of the 2023 FIDE Circuit[c]	Gukesh D (runner-up)	17	2743	16
Highest rating for January 2024[d]	Alireza Firouzja	20	2760	6