Crucial chess tournament set to decide world champ challenger

The candidate matches that will decide the challenger for the chess world championships are being played in Moscow.

Indian chess player Vishy Anand AFP/Justin Tallis

Eight top grandmasters are competing from 11th through 29th March for a 420,000 euro prize fund.

And the ultimate prize: the opportunity to challenge current World champion Magnus Carlsen from Norway in a two week match to be held in New York in November.

The line-up consists of the chess heaveyweights Vishy Anand (India), finalist at the 2014 world championship, 2015 world cup winner Sergey Karjakin, 2015 World Cup runner-up Peter Svidler (both Russia), 2014-15 FIDE Grand Prix winners Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura (both USA), two players qualified by rating Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria) and Anish Giri (Netherlands), and a player nominated by the organizers, Levon Aronian (Armenia).

The world chess organization FIDE ranks players on the basis of victories they score in tournaments and the frequency with which they play.

Players worldwide are classified according to this Elo-rating named after its creator Arbad Elo, a Hungarian-born American physics professor.

The current world champion, Magnus Carlson, has with 2851 the highest Elo-rating ever. The eight candidates currently competing to challenge him have ratings ranging from Fabiano Caruana (2794), Anish Giri (2793), Hikaru Nakamura (2790), Aronian Levon (2786), Veselin Topalov (2780), Viswanathan Anand (2762).Sergey Karjakin (2760) to Peter Svidler (2757).

After three rounds of play Anand, Karjakin and Aronian share the first place with 2 points each. Svidler, Giri and Caruana follow with 1,5. Nakamura is 7th with 1 point and Topalov has 0,5.

Monday 14th March is a rest day.

On Tuesday 15 March, round four will start with games between Svidler and Aronian, Karjakin against Anand, Caruana vs Topalov and Nakamura against Giri.