Keymer-Dubov, Esipenko-Grischuk, Bacrot-Nakamura and Aronian-Vidit are among the games to look forward to as the 2022 FIDE Grand Prix begins in Berlin on Friday 4th February at 15:00 CET. Ding Liren, who failed to get a visa, and Dmitry Andreikin, who tested positive, are absent, but the remaining 14 players have made it to Berlin, including Daniil Dubov, who has twice tested negative since he was forced to pull out of the Tata Steel Masters. 

The 2022 FIDE Grand Prix will decide the remaining two places in the next Candidates Tournament. It starts with the Berlin Grand Prix from February 4-17, where Ding Liren and Dmitry Andreikin have been replaced by Radek Wojtaszek and Andrey Esipenko. There are four groups, and the players within the group play each other twice over six rounds of classical chess. Only the winner then goes forward to a knockout. 

The new groups for the Berlin FIDE Grand Prix after Esipenko replaced Andreikin and Wojtaszek replaced Ding Liren 

The action starts each day at 9am ET | 3pm CET | 7.30pm IST and we’re going to have commentary here on chess24 from Latvian GM Arturs Neiksans, who’ll be joined on different days by Romanian WIM Raluca Sgircea and Danish WFM Ellen Nilssen.  

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Let’s have a look at the action ahead in Round 1 (click on any of the evaluations/results to open the game in the chess24 broadcast).

Pool A

Dmitry Andreikin’s unfortunate withdrawal has arguably spiced up an already spicy group by giving a route to the Candidates for 19-year-old Andrey Esipenko, who was unfortunate to miss out on automatic qualification after losing to Magnus Carlsen in Round 5 of the FIDE World Cup and falling just short in the FIDE Grand Swiss and by rating as well. He faces the formidable Russian no. 2 Alexander Grischuk, who would of course grace any Candidates Tournament. 

Etienne Bacrot has been more active as a second for Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of late, but despite losing two classical games he hit back both times to reach a World Cup quarterfinal against Magnus, and although he’s loss three and won zero classical games against Hikaru Nakamura, they last played classical chess in 2013. Nakamura is playing as a wild card after last playing classical games when he lost to Veselin Topalov in the first round of the Hamburg Grand Prix all the way back in November 2019. 

His chances are likely to dramatically improve if he can reach the knockout stages, where he can play solidly and rely on his rapid and blitz skills, while he also has the added confidence of having contracted COVID in Warsaw recently. He has much less to fear than most of the players from the daily tests!

Pool B

This group looked like being arguably the Group of Death, and Round 1 would have seen Ding Liren vs. Richard Rapport, the highest rated battle in the group stages. Alas, world no. 3 Ding Liren wasn’t able to travel, with FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich saying at the opening press conference, “unfortunately the German consulate service in China didn’t make his visa on time”. Ding himself didn’t apportion blame and said he’d been unable to book a return flight, while FIDE noted Ding had only applied for a visa a week in advance.

If, as seems likely, he’s only able to play one tournament, then his chances will be minuscule, but not zero, with Chess by the Numbers giving Ding a 0.2% chance of reaching the Candidates.  

Replacement Radek Wojtaszek has 0.00% chance there, given a lower rating and again on the assumption he only gets to play one event, but he has beaten Richard Rapport twice, including relatively recently in the 2019 Prague Masters. 

Kacper Polok will be commentating in Polish on Wojtaszek-Rapport

Fedoseev-Oparin is a clash between two aggressively-minded Russian players who will also be eyeing an opportunity in Ding’s absence. If we do see a fiery clash in Round 1 the winner’s chances of success will receive a huge boost in an event where many are predicting extreme caution from the players.    

Pool C

This has the potential to be the most enjoyable of the groups. Levon Aronian is now the top seed and will, as ever, be laser-focused on trying to fulfil a lifetime dream of winning the World Championship. His Round 1 opponent, Vidit, showed in Wijk aan Zee that he can be a real force to be reckoned with, even though things went against him at the end. 

Daniil Dubov of course had a highly eventful Wijk aan Zee, but, as with Hikaru, the fact that he’s already had COVID recently can turn into an advantage assuming he continues to test negative. He’s had an extra rest since he was forced to pull out of Wijk early.

17-year-old Vincent Keymer, who reached the tournament via the Grand Swiss, is set to be a huge local favourite, though especially in COVID times there aren’t going to be hordes of fans at the venue.  

He talked to Dina Belenkaya about who might be his toughest opponent:

It depends mostly on how the opening goes. I know that Dubov is already having great ideas in the opening, so this could mean that either it’s going alright, because usually those ideas are maybe not the first line of the engine, but also it could go very wrong, because he somewhere catches you and you make a wrong move and then it’s getting bad very fast. But generally I would say you can never really say. It really depends on how the game is starting, how can you play, how do you feel in this position.

It’s Keymer-Dubov to kick things off, while Keymer, who’s in his last year at school before he tries out the life of a chess professional, talked about Magnus Carlsen’s comments that he might only play a World Championship match against a player from the younger generation. Could Vincent be that player?

I never even thought about it. This is more or less crazy to even think about! Now that I’m extremely happy even to be in the Grand Prix, qualifying for the Candidates is already extremely, extremely unlikely, and then winning the Candidates is already a whole different story, so I don’t think this is something I really need to worry about.

Pool D

In the absence of Ding-Rapport, So-Dominguez is the highest-rated game of the day, and it will be intriguing to see how Wesley So performs on one of his very few trips abroad since the pandemic began. His fellow US star Leinier Dominguez is a rock-solid opponent, and finished just half a point back when Wesley won the recent US Championship. 

Shirov-Harikrishna has the feel of a wild-card battle. The always explosive Alexei Shirov has been in wonderful form of late as he reentered the 2700 club at the age of 49, despite only deciding to play the Grand Swiss at the very last moment and then qualifying to the Grand Prix despite not realising until the very end that it was a possibility. Harikrishna got the chance to play only when Wei Yi pulled out (with visa issues before Ding Liren), but is a player with a 2770 peak rating who can’t be written off. 

The format of the event is to first have the round-robin pools, with one rest day on Tuesday, before heading into a knockout, where each match is played over two days and two classical games, with a rapid and blitz playoff to follow, if needed. 

After this event the action then moves to Belgrade, Serbia, on February 28th, before finishing back in Berlin from March 21st (check out the full 2022 Chess Calendar). Each player competes in two events and can score a maximum of 13 points for winning a tournament. Here’s the full line-up of players (that has now grown to 26), with the players greyed out not playing in the first event. 

For the second and third events we’ll have the live commentary team of Jan Gustafsson and Peter Svdiler. 

Tune into all the action live here on chess24 from 9am ET | 3pm CET | 7.30pm IST: Combined Pools, Pool A, Pool B, Pool C, Pool D

See also:

• Official website
• All the FIDE Grand Prix games on chess24: Combined Pools, Pool A, Pool B, Pool C, Pool D, Knockout
• Nakamura and Dubov get Grand Prix wildcards
• FIDE Grand Prix series announced for Feb-Apr 2022
• Giri, Vidit question World Chess FIDE Grand Prix sponsorship demands
• Berlin FIDE Grand Prix: Candidates last chance saloon
• Dubov on forfeits, masks, testing positive and playing in Berlin
• Grand Prix in turmoil as players forced to pull out