The Grand Chess Tour is pleased to announce that reigning World Champion GM Magnus Carlsen from Norway and GM Leinier Dominguez from Cuba have both accepted wildcard invitations to participate in the 2018 Grand Chess Tour at our forthcoming tournaments in Saint Louis, USA in August 2018.
GM Magnus Carlsen will participate in the 2018 Sinquefield Cup while GM Leinier Dominguez, currently rated number 2 in the world on the June 2018 FIDE Rapid rating list, will participate in the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz tournament.
During their respective tournaments, they will be joined by the nine full tour participants who are:
- GM Fabiano Caruana, (USA)
- GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (AZE)
- GM Wesley So (USA)
- GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (FRA)
- GM Hikaru Nakamura (USA)
- GM Sergey Karjakin (RUS)
- GM Viswanathan Anand (IND)
- GM Levon Aronian (ARM)
- GM Alexander Grischuk (RUS)
The 2018 Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz will take place from August 11 until August 15 and offers a prize fund of $150,000. The 2018 Sinquefield Cup will then take place from August 17 until August 28 with the players competing for a prize pool of $300,000. Both tournaments will be held at the Saint Louis Chess Club while the traditional Ultimate Moves tournament will take place between the two events on August 16. The Sinquefield Cup will be the last scheduled encounter between the current World Champion and contender Fabiano Caruana before their highly anticipated World Championship match in November.
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