FIDE has announced details of the 2014-15 Grand Prix series which will qualify two participants for the world championship Candidates chess tournament. The matches will all be contested in Eastern Europe and Asia, and will last from October until May 2015. The playing sites are Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Iran and Russia. The four tournaments which comprise the Grand Prix series have been reduced from the previous cycle’s six, and players are required to participate in three of the competitions. Sixteen of the world’s highest-ranked and strongest players, including the world champion Magnus Carlsen and Vishy Anand, have been invited to participate.
Meanwhile, the sixth and final stage of the Women’s Grand Prix series is currently being contested in the United Arab Emirates. Twelve of the most talented women chess players worldwide are competing in the Grand Prix. The winner of the series will play a ten-game world championship match with the women’s world champion. After round three, Ju Wenjun of China and Harika Dronavalli of India are leading the group with 2½ points each.
In Guyana, there is a vital lesson which we can learn from and embrace, when we consider the nature of these elimination tournaments. To obtain our most talented players, let us say for the next Olympiad, we could host three accumulative points tournaments within the next two year cycle, similar to the Grand Prix series. Beginning from this year’s national championships, game points could be awarded to the participants according to their performances. At the 2015 national championships, we could again employ the identical system to determine our consistent top performers. Finally, in 2016, before the commencement of the actual Olympiad in August or
