The 2022 Candidates Starts Tomorrow

A look ahead.

Candidates tournaments (and sometimes matches) are designed to select the challenger for the next world championship match, though on at least three occasions something went awry between the two stages. In 1974, Anatoly Karpov edged Viktor Korchnoi 12.5-11.5 in the Candidates final to earn a match with Bobby Fischer, but when Fischer proposed terms that were unacceptable to FIDE he was eventually stripped of his title, making the Karpov-Korchnoi match the de facto World Championship.

In 1993, Nigel Short defeated Jan Timman in their Candidates final to earn a match with Garry Kasparov. That match did occur, but they broke off from FIDE, who promptly had Timman and Short’s victim in the Candidates semi-final, Karpov, face off for a competing World Championship match. The split was only repaired in 2006.

In 1998, Alexei Shirov and Vladimir Kramnik faced off for the right to play Kasparov in the non-FIDE branch of the World Championship. Shirov defeated Kramnik, but when Kasparov couldn’t find organizers to pay as much as he thought the match merited he eventually dropped Shirov as a challenger, tried to recruit Viswanathan Anand, and then finally played…you guessed it, Kramnik, who defeated him.

So why do I bring up these cases where the Candidates in some way or other failed to properly connect with the World Championship? It’s because the current champion, Magnus Carlsen, has suggested that he may not play the winner of this Candidates event, unless perhaps his challenger is the young French (by way of Iran) star Alireza Firouzja. So it might turn out that what we’re calling the Candidates will in retrospect prove to be the World Championship.

In all of the cases above, the Candidates winner was determined by a series of knockout matches, but for the last few cycles FIDE has used a tournament format, a double round-robin with eight players. Those eight players, and the basis of their qualification, are as follows:

1. Ian Nepomniachtchi (the losing finalist in the last World Championship match)

2. Teimour Radjabov (FIDE compensation for his missing out on the last Candidates due to his protest concerning their COVID policy)

3. Jan-Krzysztof Duda (winner of the 2021 World Cup)

4. Alireza Firouzja (winner of the 2021 FIDE Grand Swiss)

5. Fabiano Caruana (runner-up of the 2021 FIDE Grand Swiss)

6. Hikaru Nakamura (winner of the 2022 FIDE Grand Prix)

7. Richard Rapport (runner-up of the 2022 FIDE Grand Prix)

8. Ding Liren (rating qualifier, replacing Sergey Karjakin, who had qualified as the runner-up of the 2021 World Cup but was banned due to his remarks in favor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine)

So that’s who’s playing. Now for the event specifics: Play will run from tomorrow, June 17 through July 4, in Madrid, Spain. There will be one round a day for three consecutive days, followed by a rest day. There will be 14 rounds, and - a wonderful change - in case there’s a tie for first there will be a playoff on July 5. This is a huge improvement over the previous policy of settling things by tiebreaks, which led to tragic last rounds in 2013 and 2016.

The tournament website is here, and these are the pairings for round 1, which starts tomorrow at 15:00 CEST (= 9 a.m. ET in the U.S.):

Duda - Rapport

Ding Liren - Nepomniachtchi

Caruana - Nakamura

Radjabov - Firouzja

Note that the Caruana-Nakamura pairing has to take place in round 1 (and the reverse pairing in round 8) because of the long-running FIDE rule that players from the same country must face off at the start of each cycle. This is a very good rule, designed to prevent collusion. It’s not that there’s any reason to think that Caruana would throw a game to Nakamura or vice-versa. There’s no reason to doubt either player’s integrity, and as far as I’m aware they aren’t friends (I don’t mean that they’re enemies, only that they aren’t particularly close), but it’s best to avoid the appearance and the temptation for wrongdoing. (FIDE didn’t seem particularly worried about this when it came to Ding Liren’s string of all-Chinese tournaments when he was trying to qualify for the Candidates, but their lapse there doesn’t obviate the fact that it’s a good rule in the Candidates and for norm events.)

Finally, let’s offer predictions, or most modestly, some preliminary thoughts.

Nepomniachtchi: He is strong enough to win - he won the last Candidates, after all - and he will have a large store of ideas from the work he did for his match with Carlsen. On the other hand, he got bruised pretty badly by Carlsen, and he may not have recovered his confidence. If he gets off to an excellent start he’ll have a shot, but I think he’s unlikely to win.

Radjabov: Virtually no chance.

Duda: He is a dangerous player, capable of beating anyone and everyone. I wouldn’t call him the favorite, but I would not be too surprised if he won the event.

Firouzja: When it comes to talent and strength, he is definitely one of the favorites. On paper, it’s between him, Ding Liren, and Fabiano Caruana. His most recent performance wasn’t fantastic, though, and he has shown nerves in high-pressure situations. Only 18 (he turns 19 on Sunday), his lack of experience may prove his undoing. If he doesn’t become the champion this time around, I’d expect him to be the favorite the next time around. He might win this time, too—hopefully it will come down to chess and not to some psychological disaster.

Caruana: If he can recover his best form, he is the favorite, period. Even if he’s only playing reasonably well, I expect him to be in the running to the end.

Nakamura: He was #2 in the world at one point, and he is the world’s #2 in rapid and #1 in blitz. He is capable of just about anything, and he is a great competitor. He is resilient, tricky, and confident, and if he gets off to a good start he’ll have a chance.

Rapport: Easily underestimated, he was #5 in the world a month ago and is still #8. He hasn’t won many elite events, and his penchant for offbeat openings makes it easy to underestimate him. I expect him to be in the middle-to-upper middle of the pack, but would be surprised to see him win.

Ding Liren: It’s hard to know what kind of form he’s in, as the slew of games he played a couple of months ago to qualify were low pressure games, and almost entirely against non-elite opposition. (Only Wei Yi was over 2700, if I recall correctly.) Nevertheless, he is the world’s #2 player at the moment, and is to my mind the co-favorite with Caruana.

In sum, if Caruana plays his best chess, he wins. If not, then he’s a co-favorite with Ding, with Firouzja having a chance if he can overcome his sometimes shaky nerves and his lack of experience. Duda and Nakamura are my dark horses, Nepo and Rapport are very unlikely to win but are strong enough to do it if everything goes right, and Radjabov…will not win.

Of course, predictions are nonsense - even my prediction about Radjabov is nonsense. Let’s see whose nonsense comes closest: predict away!