GM Kamsky, Gata USA - GM De La Paz Perdomo, Frank CUB
GM Leko, Peter HUN - GM Ivanov, Alexander USA
GM Moiseenko, Alexander UKR - GM Shankland, Samuel L USA
GM Wang, Yue CHN - GM Robson, Ray USA
GM Nielsen, Peter Heine DEN - GM Shulman, Yuri USA
GM Onischuk, Alexander USA - GM Adly, Ahmed EGY
Sevan are you working the tournament?
Nope…
A while back, I remember FIDE saying that they would change the knockout system. The 128 players would form 16 groups of eight and play round robins. The winners of each of the round robins would then be divided into two groups of eight and play round robins again. The two winners would then play in a 4-game match to decide the championship.
It seemed like a better format than the current knock-out system to me because:
- Under the old format, only 32 of the 128 players would play even six games, under the new one, everybody would play at least seven.
- Only three tie-break days as opposed to seven.
- A single loss is less likely to ruin a player’s chances.
I believe this proposed change was abandoned after the two-player candidates match was replaced with an eight-player candidate tournament, and the importance of the world cup went down, but I might have my timeline messed up.
It looks like the pairings have changed now:
GM Gata Kamsky - IM Diego Rafael Di Berardino
GM Hao Wang - GM Alexander Ivanov
GM Peter Leko - GM Sam Shankland
GM Etienne Bacrot - GM Ray Robson
GM Vladimir Potkin - GM Yury Shulman
GM Alexander Onischuk - GM Ivan Ivanisevic