FIDE World Cup 2017 took place in Hualing and Biltmore Hotel in Tbilisi/Georgia, from 2nd to 27th September.
After 17 days of long and exhausting fights, Levon Aronian (ARM, 2802) and Ding Liren (CHN, 2771) reached the final of the FIDE World Cup 2017 and qualified for the FIDE Candidates tournament which will determine who will have the chance to play the match for the title of World Chess Champion. The final match of the FIDE World Cup 2017 started on 23rd September at the beautiful playing venue in Biltmore Hotel.
Aronian won the final match with result 4:2 and became the Winner of the FIDE World Cup 2017.
The finalists were competing for the first place of this prestigious tournament in 4 games match with classical time control. All the four games ended in a draw even though Aronian had better positions especially in the last two games. Aronian took the advantage with winning in the first tiebreak game with white pieces in 30 moves and with a creative attack in the kingside. In the second tiebreak game Ding Liren tried to strike back and equalize, but Aronian didn’t give him much chances with winning in this game too.
128 the strongest players in the world played the Knock Out tournament with an impressive prize fund of 1.6 million US dollars. Among participants were the World Champion and number one on FIDE rating list Magnus Carlsen, three former World Champions Viswanathan Anand, Vladimir Kramnik and Ruslan Ponomariov, the winner of the previous World Cup in Baku, Sergey Karjakin, top two women players-world number one and former Women’s World Champion Hou Yifan and current European woman champion Nana Dzagnidze. The participation of the 15 top players made this event the strongest World Cup in history.
The event was organized by the Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs of Georgia, the Check In Georgia Sports, the Georgian Chess Federation, Organising Committee of The 2018 World Chess Olympiad and Tbilisi City Hall while the title Sponsor is SOCAR.