Saint Louis, MO, February 7, 2019 – The Grand Chess Tour is pleased to confirm the names of the twelve players that will be competing as full tour participants in 2019. They are as follows:
| # | Name | FED | URS (Rank) | FIDE (Rank) |
| 1 | Carlsen, Magnus | NOR | 2859 (1) | 2835 (1) |
| 2 | Nakamura, Hikaru | USA | 2806 (2) | 2749 (16) |
| 3 | Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime | FRA | 2796 (3) | 2780 (6) |
| 4 | Caruana, Fabiano | USA | 2794 (4) | 2828 (2) |
| 5 | Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar | AZE | 2792 (5) | 2817 (3) |
| 6 | Ding, Liren | CHN | 2788 (6) | 2813 (4) |
| 7 | Aronian, Levon | ARM | 2782 (7) | 2767 (10) |
| 8 | So, Wesley | USA | 2779 (8) | 2765 (11) |
| 9 | Nepomniachtchi, Ian | RUS | 2778 (9) | 2763 (13) |
| 10 | Karjakin, Sergey | RUS | 2776 (10) | 2753 (15) |
| 11 | Giri, Anish | NED | 2765 (14) | 2783 (5) |
| 12 | Anand, Viswanathan | IND | 2761 (16) | 2773 (8) |
* Ratings per the URS™ and FIDE Classic rating lists as at January 1, 2019 (selection date)
The only player to decline his invitation was GM Vladimir Kramnik following the announced of his retirement from professional chess at the end of January 2019. He was replaced by GM Sergey Karjakin who accepted his full tour invitation as the first alternate.
The process of finalising the allocation of players to individual events has already commenced and further announcements regarding the participant lists for each event as well as the selection of wildcards will be made in due course.
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