FIDE Grand Prix 2022, Tournament 1, Round 1

One of the things reasonably well established in sporting nomenclature is what a world cup format is, and it involves all-play-all group stages followed by a knockout. FIDE, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that its world championship qualifying cycle should include an event with a world cup format, but that this should not be the event called the World Cup. Instead it is the Grand Prix.

The Grand Prix is, in fact, a series of three events, each of 16 players, with the two players who do best over the two events that they play going through to the Candidates. Four groups of four play a double-round all-play-all, with the winner of each group going forward to a knockout stage.

The qualifiers for this event were those two didn't quite make it in the previous two events - the players who reached the quarters but not the final in the World Cup, and the players who finished 3rd to 8th in the Grand Prix; they between them accounted for 11 of the 24 places. Of the other thirteen places, two went to wildcards (one chosen by the FIDE president and one by the host federation), and the other eleven were filled from the rating list.

At least, that was the idea. COVID and the visa process had their own ideas, and two of the original qualifiers - Ding Liren and Dmitri Andreikin - were unable to play as scheduled in the first event, and were replaced by Andrey Esipenko and Radoslaw Wojtaszek.

Play on the first day panned out as follows:

Group A: Both games were draws, but in rather contrasting ways. Bacrot-Nakamura never got going as the Frenchman chose a very solid anti-Berlin system, whereas Esipenko-Grischuk was a more entertaining encounter that ended in an unusual draw by repetition.

Group B: Two white wins here: Wojtaszek showed he was not here just to make up the numbers by beating the group's top seed Rapport, while Fedoseev won smoothly against his fellow Russian Oparin.

Group C: Keymer-Dubov reached the dreaded "Arkell Ending" of R+B v R, with the Russian's defensive technique being equal to the task. In the other game, Aronian ground out a win in the ending against Vidit.

Group D: An interesting long-term pawn sacrifice in Shirov-Harikrishna proved good enough for a draw, but no more, while lots of early exchanges also resulted in a split point in So-Dominguez.

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