The home of chess in Galway
The knockout phase of the chess.com Global Championship kicks off on September 14th, and features 64 top chess players, 8 of whom will go on to play in the finals at the beginning of November.
To make this even more exciting for you and to support the Galway Chess Club, we want to encourage you to back a small selection of players in the hopes of winning some money.
Below is a ranked table of all 64 participants, each of whom can have at most one backer. For a fiver (5 euro), you can choose three of these players to back (one with a starting rank from 1-20, one from 21-40, and one from 41-64.) If one of your backed players wins the tournament, you will win five times their ranking number (plus your original fiver); e.g. if you have backed Ding Liren and he wins, you get €10 back, if you have backed Fabiano Caruana and he wins, you get €40, and if you have backed Mitrabha Guha and he wins, you get €325.
To enter, email us at galwaychess[at]gmail[dot]com, with your name (or nom-de-plume to display, in case you wish to keep your investment a secret for spousal/Revenue purposes), three selected players (one each from within ranges 1-20, 21-40, 41-64), and a promise to hand over 5e to us at the next available opportunity/or Revolut it to Fintan, etc. Given that there’ll be a max of one backer per player (in the interests of avoiding bankruptcy), we’ll operate on a first-come-first-served basis, and we’ll deal with any complications if and when they arise. Any surplus will go towards the club’s rent for the year.
If all three of your choices make it through the first round, you may pick a free extra fourth player from any of the remaining unselected players.
Entries need to be in before the tournament starts on September 14th.
Good luck!
RANK NAME RATING ELIMINATED BACKER
1 Ding Liren 2808
2 Ian Nepomniachtchi 2792 James
3 Wesley So 2771 James
4 Hikaru Nakamura 2768 Michael
5 Anish Giri 2764
6 Levon Aronian 2759 Fintan
7 Fabiano Caruana 2758 3 Niko
8 Shakhriyar Mamedyarov 2757 2
9 Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 2757 2 David
10 Viswanathan Anand 2756 1
11 Vladimir Kramnik 2753 2
12 Teimour Radjabov 2747 Scott
13 Leinier Dominguez Perez 2745 3
14 Alexander Grischuk 2745 1
15 Jan-Krzysztof Duda 2731
16 Dmitry Andreikin 2729
17 Veselin Topalov 2728 1
18 Le Quang Liem 2728 1
19 Arjun Erigaisi 2725 2 Niko
20 Wang Hao 2722 2
21 Nodirbek Abdusattorov 2713 2 Fintan
22 Francisco Vallejo 2711 1
23 Vidit Gujrathi 2710 1
24 Kirill Alekseenko 2707 1
25 Ray Robson 2690 1
26 Jeffery Xiong 2690 3 James
27 Michael Adams 2689 1
28 Vladimir Fedoseev 2685 1 Michael
29 Sam Sevian 2684 3
30 Peter Svidler 2683 2
31 David Navara 2681 2
32 Vasyl Ivanchuk 2678 2 David
33 Andrey Esipenko 2678 2 Niko
34 Nihal Sarin 2677 Scott
35 Alexei Shirov 2673 1
36 Maxim Matlakov 2671 2
37 Boris Gelfand 2668 1
38 Gata Kamsky 2666 2
39 Peter Leko 2663 1
40 Bassem Amin 2663 1
41 Alexey Sarana 2662 3 James
42 Hou Yifan 2650 1 David
43 Rauf Mamedov 2646 1
44 Hrant Melkumyan 2645 1
45 Maksim Chigaev 2641 1
46 Eduardo Iturrizaga 2630 1
47 Vladislav Kovalev 2623 1 Fintan
48 Raunak Sadhwani 2620 2 Michael
49 Benjamin Bok 2618 2
50 Rasmus Svane 2615 1
51 Eric Hansen 2613 2 Niko
52 Aram Hakobyan 2611 1
53 Oleksandr Bortnyk 2604 1 Scott
54 Nikolas Theodorou 2598 1
55 Martyn Kravtsiv 2598 1
56 Pavel Ponkratov 2593 3
57 David Paravyan 2592 1
58 Jose Martinez 2591 2
59 Ju Wenjun 2560 1
60 Mahammad Muradli 2555 1
61 Tuan Minh Le 2542 1
62 Denis Lazavik 2523 1
63 Rodrigo Vasquez 2518 1
64 Mitrabha Guha 2471 1