Toronto Candidates - Third Week

Last week's post, Toronto Candidates - Second Week (April 2024), identifying typical patterns that have held in recent Candidates tournaments, predicted that GMs Gukesh and Nepomniachtchi were the two most likely players to win the event. Many observers were expecting Nepo to repeat his overwhelming success of the two most recent Candidates events, where he won both outright by a comfortable margin. Caissa, the goddess of chess, had another outcome in mind.

Going into the final round, Gukesh held a half-point lead over three of the pre-tournament favorites, Nepo included. Here's how Chessbase.com summarized the standings after the penultimate round (see below for a link to the full report).

Chessbase.com rd.13 report • Gukesh D, at 17, is a win away from becoming the next World Chess Championship challenger. The Indian prodigy beat Alireza Firouzja on Saturday to go into the final round of the Candidates Tournament as the sole leader. Three experienced contenders, who are also the top seeds in Toronto, stand a half point behind: Ian Nepomniachtchi, Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana.

That summary didn't mention that all four of the leading players were due to play each other in the final round. In the crosstable, for each of the four players I've circled the first result against the only remaining opponent.

Top: Candidates R13: Gukesh beats Firoujza, enters final round as sole leader (chessbase.com; Carlos Alberto Colodro)
Bottom: Gukesh becomes World Championship challenger at 17! (ditto)

The report preceding the bottom crosstable started,

Chessbase.com rd.14 report • Gukesh D, an incredibly level-headed 17-year-old from Chennai, became the World Chess Championship challenger by winning the very strong 2024 Candidates Tournament in Toronto. Gukesh entered the final round as the sole leader, and safely held a draw with black against direct contender Hikaru Nakamura. Either Fabiano Caruana or Ian Nepomniachtchi could have caught the youngster with a win, but their direct encounter saw Caruana failing to make the most of a number of winning chances before agreeing to a 109-move draw in what turned out to be a titanic struggle.

For an interview with the winner by Chessbase.com, see The dream becomes a reality: Gukesh’s victory in a historic event (chessbase.com; Shahid Ahmed). It started,

Records were shattered and history was made at the 2024 FIDE Candidates. Two events -- Open [sic] and Women’s -- took place simultaneously for the first time at the same hall. We saw the first brother-sister duo, R Praggnanandhaa and R Vaishali, participating. In the end, D Gukesh broke a number of records: he was the youngest ever to win the Candidates Tournament and thus become the youngest ever challenger to the World Championship. Gukesh was interviewed by Sagar Shah ['ChessBase India’s co-founder and CEO'].

I'll have a wrapup report on the entire event and a separate report on the Women’s Candidates as soon as I get a chance. Congratulations to GM Gukesh on a historic victory that very few knowledgeable observers had expected.

Toronto Candidates - Second Week

Yesterday was a rest day after round ten of the 2024 Candidates tournament. A week ago, in Toronto Candidates - First Week (April 2024), I wrote,

Here is [a] chart, showing the [fifth] round in the 2022 tournament with the leader circled in red. Also shown is the overall standing after round five in the 2024 tournament as presented by a top chess news source. [...] Also circled in red in the top chart is the 2022 leader after ten rounds plus the winner at the end. After all three rounds, the leader was GM Nepomniachtchi.

Let's extract the 2022 portion of that chart and combine it with the standing after round ten in the 2024 tournament presented by the same chess news source. That gives the following chart.

Top: 2022 Candidates Tournament (m-w.com; 'Cumulative Score')
Bottom: Candidates R10: Nakamura and Caruana grab crucial wins (chessbase.com; Carlos Alberto Colodro)

Just like in the 'First Week' post, we see GMs Gukesh and Nepomniachtchi tied for first and second places, a half point ahead of third place. One big difference is that GM Caruana was alone in third after five rounds, but now shares that place with GMs Praggnanandhaa and Nakamura. That leaves five players (out of eight) with a chance of winning the event.

Only first place has real value -- the challenger's seat in the forthcoming World Championship match against Ding Liren, the reigning World Champion. Runners-up get money, but no glory.

Toronto Candidates - First Week

Yesterday was round five of the 2024 Candidates tournament. In the previous post, Toronto Candidates - Last Resources (April 2024), I mentioned charts, lots of charts:-

Chart showing the round-by-round progress of the participants in the 2013, 2014, and 2016 candidates tournaments [...] New chart for the 2018 and 2020 tournaments. I'll do the same for the next post by adapting the chart developed for the 2022 Candidates Tournament.

As promised, here is the adapted chart, showing the same round in the 2022 tournament with the leader circled in red. Also shown is the overall standing after round five in the 2024 tournament as presented by a top chess news source.

Top: 2022 Candidates Tournament (m-w.com; 'Cumulative Score')
Bottom: Candidates R5: Gukesh and Nakamura score in eventful round (chessbase.com; Carlos Alberto Colodro)

Also circled in red in the top chart is the 2022 leader after ten rounds plus the winner at the end. After all three rounds, the leader was GM Nepomniachtchi.

The choice of ten rounds for the second red circle was not an accident. That will be the point the tournament has reached at the time of the next post on this blog. Will the leader again be Nepomniachtchi, or maybe GM Gukesh, or maybe both, or maybe someone completely different? Past is prologue, except when it's not.

Toronto Candidates - Last Resources

The two FIDE Candidate tournaments start tomorrow. After a series of four consecutive preliminary posts, starting with Toronto Candidates - Kickoff (March 2024), we're one day away from the real deal. Since there is nothing to say about the results, let's list some of the resources.

First, here are some general references. The TWIC pages are good for getting a bird's eye view of the two main events -- the Candidates and the Women's Candidates -- without having to scroll past the dozens of large, extraneous photos that the other main chess sites use to illustrate their reports.

• FIDE Candidates 2024 (theweekinchess.com; TWIC)
• FIDE Women's Candidates Tournament 2024 (ditto)
• FIDE Candidates Tournament 2024: All The Information (chess.com)

Next, here are some predictions. The favorite appears to be Fabiano Caruana.

• 2024-03-29: Who The Stats Say Will Be The Next World Championship Challenger (chess.com; NathanielGreen)
• 2024-04-02: Candidates: Who will win? (chessbase.com)
• 2024-04-03: FIDE Candidates 2024: Preview and Predictions (lichess.org)
• 2024-04-03: Magnus Carlsen Ranks The Candidates Players (chess.com; TarjeiJS)

One of the traditions on this blog has been to track the round-by-round progress of the players compared with the winners of previous events. For example:-

• Madrid Candidates - First Week (June 2022) • 'Chart showing the round-by-round progress of the participants in the 2013, 2014, and 2016 candidates tournaments [...] New chart for the 2018 and 2020 tournaments'

I'll do the same for the next post -- which should also be a 'First Week' post -- by adapting the chart developed for 2022 Candidates Tournament (m-w.com; see 'Cumulative Score'). I've always been impressed at how fast the main contestants can be identified. There is only one real prize : first place and a crack at the World Championship. Second place is the same as last place.

Toronto Candidates - Sponsors

Given all the visa trouble we saw in the previous post, Toronto Candidates - Visas (March 2024), you might well ask, 'Why was Toronto Canada chosen to host the event?'. The answer to the question starts with Partners (candidates2024.fide.com), where we find,

The Scheinberg Family • The Scheinberg family is a long-term partner of the International Chess Federation. The cooperation that started a few years ago has already resulted in three Grand Swiss events (2019, 2021 and 2023), two editions oa [sic; 'of'?] Women Grand Swiss (2021 and 2023), and the FIDE Candidates (2022). Supporting the FIDE Candidates Tournament 2024 and the FIDE Women’s Candidates Tournament 2024 in Toronto, Canada is another step to help the top-level chess as well as to promote the game on all the continents.

Other partners mentioned on the page are 1 Hotel Toronto, Chessable, and The Chess Federation of Canada. Here are some recent announcements by FIDE referring to the Scheinbergs:-

• 2021-12-28: Candidates Tournament to take place in Madrid sponsored by Chess.com (fide.com) • 'As the organising sponsor of this prestigious tournament, Chess.com signed an agreement on Monday with governing body FIDE and the Scheinberg family, patrons of the event.'
• 2022-04-19: FIDE announces long-term cooperation with the Scheinberg family (ditto; 'Photo credit: Pokerstars')
• 2023-03-27: Toronto will host the 2024 FIDE Candidates Tournaments (ditto) • 'The event will be sponsored by the Scheinberg family, as part of the long-term collaboration agreement that was announced in 2022.'

Despite the six previous events, the Scheinbergs have received only one mention on this blog: 2023 Grand Swiss, Isle of Man (November 2023). This says as much about their desire for privacy as it does about my journalistic skills. That one blog mention said, 'For the Scheinberg family, see the FIDE news item dated 2022-04-19 in the following list' [also above]. It turns out that there are three generations of the Scheinberg family with a keen interest in chess. All links are to Wikipedia:-

• Matafia Seinbergas (wikipedia.org) • 'Matafia Seinbergas (also Matafia Sembergas or Matafia Scheinberg; 17 November 1909 — 11 September 2002) was a Lithuanian chess player, medical scientist (immunologist, microbiologist, virologist), and the father of Isai Scheinberg, founder of PokerStars.'
• Isai Scheinberg (ditto) • 'Isai Scheinberg (born 1946 or 1947) is the Lithuanian Jewish founder of the PokerStars online poker site. Scheinberg previously had been a senior programmer for IBM Canada.'
• Mark Scheinberg (ditto) • '(Igal) Mark Scheinberg (born 1973) is an Israeli-Canadian businessman and investor with investments in various sectors including real estate and luxury hospitality. He is the co-founder and former co-owner of the online gambling company PokerStars, which was sold in 2014 to Amaya Gaming for $4.9 billion.'

I doubt that anyone has become fabulously wealthy working as a 'senior programmer for IBM Canada', but the 'online gambling company PokerStars' offers a clue. Here are two sources, the first American and the second Canadian:-

• 2020-01-24 The Incredible Rise Of PokerStars Cofounder Isai Scheinberg -- And His Surrender To Federal Agents (forbes.com) • 'Last Friday, Isai Scheinberg, the 73-year-old cofounder of PokerStars, the world’s biggest online poker company, boarded a plane in Switzerland for the nine-hour flight to New York City. On the other end, he would not be greeted at the airport by family members or businesses associates, but by federal agents who would take him into custody.'
• 2023-11-23: How a Canadian billionaire made a fortune from illegal gaming and avoided prison (ricochet.media; 'The Israeli-Canadian founder of PokerStars used his vast wealth and powerful connections to cut deals') • 'He is arguably one of Canada’s wealthiest and most successful business people that the country knows virtually nothing about. But Isai Scheinberg is okay with that. [...] In 2016, the Scheinbergs bought a substantial stake in Chess.com, the largest online chess platform in the world. [...] The Scheinbergs decided to end their investment in 2020.'

Here's the full story given from the poker perspective:-

• 2021-04-15: Isai Scheinberg: His Company, His Legacy, and How Black Friday Impacted Both (pokerstake.com) • 'Ten years after poker’s most infamous day, Black Friday, threatened to destroy the company he and his son Mark built, Scheinberg is ready to let the poker world hear from him for the first time.'

To understand that story, it helps to understand Black Friday. We're not talking the day after Turkey Day (aka Thanksgiving) here: United States v. Scheinberg (wikipedia.org). It starts,

United States v. Scheinberg (2011) is a United States federal criminal case against the founders of the three largest online poker companies, PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Cereus (Absolute Poker/Ultimatebet), and a handful of their associates, which alleges that the defendants violated the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) and engaged in bank fraud and money laundering to process transfers to and from their customers.

In the mid-2000s, I remember watching poker for the first time on television. It was at a bar run by a Brussels tennis club and it was riveting. Is there a connection between the success of online poker and the success of online chess? I bet that the management of Chess.com thinks so and that is has something to do with the Scheinbergs.

Toronto Candidates - Visas

Visa problems for World Championship events and qualifiers aren't new -- consider, for example, the 1999 FIDE Knockout Matches (m-w.com; Las Vegas, VII-VIII, 1999), and the 2004 FIDE Knockout Matches (ditto; Tripoli, VI-VII, 2004) -- but they have never threatened to derail the organization of an event. The 2024 Toronto Candidates provided a new level of uncertainty:-

• 2024-03-04: Candidates Tournament: Visa trouble (chessbase.com; André Schulz) • 'Four weeks before the start of the Candidates Tournament in Toronto, almost all the participants and their travelling companions are still waiting for the visas they applied for months ago to be issued. FIDE has now sent an "urgent visa appeal to the Canadian government" and is even considering moving the "most prestigious tournament in the chess world" to another country.'
• 2024-03-08: Candidates Tournaments to take place in Toronto after all! (ditto) • 'FIDE has announced that all outstanding visa applications for the entry of the Candidates and their companions as well as organising staff have been approved by the Canadian authorities and the Candidates Tournaments will take place in Toronto starting from April 3, as was originally planned.'

The Chessbase.com reports provided a sober analysis of speculation concerning the global political issues behind the visa brouhaha. The corresponding Chess.com reports provided another level of brouhaha in the hundreds of comments about the situation:-

• 2024-03-02: FIDE Makes 'Urgent Visa Appeal' To Canadian Government Regarding Candidates (chess.com; TarjeiJS)
• 2024-03-07: Candidates Given Green Light As Visa Issues Resolved Just In Time (ditto)

The second Chess.com report mentioned,

The event was at risk of being relocated to Spain with over 40 players and officials grappling with pending visa approvals, as revealed by Vladimir Drkulec, the President of the Canadian Chess Federation, last weekend.

The CFC's Drkulec participated in the commentary ('vdrkulec') during the rapidly evolving situation. One of his last comments, a long summary documenting the resolution of the crisis, is an important footnote to the historical record.

Toronto Candidates - Women

In last week's post, Toronto Candidates - Kickoff (March 2024), I created a crosstable to determine the historical record of all eight participants playing each other. I ended the post saying,

Apologies for not creating a similar table for the Women's Candidates Tournament, which takes place at the same time in Toronto. I ran out of time for the table, but will make up for it when I can.

Since I was also interested in the results, I decided to give it priority. The last row is for the Women's World Champion, Ju Wenjun.

	Gor	Kon	Lag	Lei	Muz	Ram	Sal	Tan	:	Ju
Goryachkina	xx	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	:	*
Koneru, Humpy		xx	*	*	*	*	*	*	:	*
Lagno			xx	*	*	*	*	*	:	*
Lei Tingjie				xx	*	*	*	*	:	*
Muzychuk A.					xx	*	*	*	:	*
Rameshbabu						xx	*	*	:	*
Salimova							xx	*	:	*
Tan Zhongyi								xx	:	*
Ju Wenjun									:	xx

As with last week's table, the links under the players' names go to that player's FIDE rating page. The links in the crosstable go to Chessgames.com.