The Candidate Tournament is one of the most important tournaments in FIDE, since its winner has the possibility of challenging the world champion (currently Magnus Carlsen) to a match to take away the title and thus become new world champions. But how is this difficult tournament? Here we tell you.
The Candidates Tournament is undoubtedly one of the most difficult as 8 very strong players participate in it, usually the first chess players in the FIDE world ranking (not always, this year for example Levon Aronian and Wesley So, 5th and 6th in the world respectively, do not participate) in which they face each other twice for a total of 14 rounds.
The rhythm of the games is classic: 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 moves, and 15 minutes for the rest of the game, with an increment of 30 seconds per move from move 61. Winning games award one point, draws 1/2 points and defeats none. Whoever gets the most will be proclaimed champion and will become the official challenger for Magnus Carlsen.
What happens in case of a tie?
There are not a few fans who have asked this question, what would happen if two or more players ended up with the same number of points after the 7 rounds were over. For this, FIDE has tiebreaker criteria, then if 2 or more players have the same amount, the winner is defined as follows: (1) results in tie-break games for first place; (2) Sonneborn–Berger score (SB); (3) total number of wins; (4) head-to-head score among tied players; (5) drawing of lots.
