The Grand Chess Tour is pleased to announce the event level wildcards for the 2017 Grand Chess Tour events in Paris and Leuven.
The GCT Advisory Board considered both the players URS™ standings as well as recent exceptional performances to finalise the selection of these 8 wildcards.
The board also considered local sponsor preferences while seeking to invite players who will bring a dynamic and exciting element to the respective tournaments in which they will be participating.
The four event level wildcards in each tournament will join the six full tour participants to complete the ten player fields that will fight for the US$150,000 prize fund in each event. The wildcards and full tournament fields for the two tournaments are as follows:
Paris GCT Rapid (Paris, France)
21 – 25 June, 2017
Magnus Carlsen (NOR)
Hikaru Nakamura (USA)
Wesley So (USA)
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (FRA)
Sergey Karjakin (RUS)
Fabiano Caruana (USA)
Alexander Grischuk (RUS, wildcard)
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (AZE, wildcard)
Veselin Topalov (BUL, wildcard)
Etienne Bacrot (FRA, wildcard)
YourNextMove Rapid (Leuven, Belgium)
28 June – 2 July, 2017
Magnus Carlsen (NOR)
Wesley So (USA)
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (FRA)
Viswanathan Anand (IND)
Ian Nepomniachti (RUS)
Levon Aronian (ARM)
Vladimir Kramnik (RUS, wildcard)
Anish Giri (NED, wildcard)
Vassily Ivanchuk (UKR, wildcard)
Baadur Jobava (GEO, wildcard)
The event level wildcards for the remaining three events will be announced in due course.
About the Grand Chess Tour (www.grandchesstour.org)
