Leinier Domínguez will face tough test at Berlin Grand Prix

January 26, 2022

Chess player Leinier Domínguez will have a very complicated elimination group at the Berlin Grand Prix, which will take place from February 4 to 17 and will kick off a series of three events that will ultimately award two spots for the Candidates Tournament for the world crown held by Norwegian Magnus Carlsen.

If he wants to advance to the second round of the tournament in the German capital, the player from Guines (ELO 2752) will have to lead a bracket where he will play a double round-robin against American Wesley So (2772), Indian Pentala Harikrishna (2717) and Spanish Alexei Shirov (2704).

According to the databases consulted, Domínguez's head-to-head record against these rivals is as follows: vs So, 1-1 with 5 draws; vs Harikrishna, 2-3 with 6 draws; and vs Shirov, 1-1 with 3 draws.

By the way, this Group D is the only one where all four competitors surpass the 2700-point barrier.

The competition format establishes that the leaders of each of the four brackets will play a semifinal whose winners will then compete for the title.

Among the other notable names at the Berlin event are Chinese Ding Liren (2799), Americans Levon Aronian (2772) and Hikaru Nakamura (2736), Russian Alexander Grischuk (2764) and Hungarian Richard Rapport (2763).

The contenders to obtain one of the aforementioned tickets for the Candidates will participate in two of the three scheduled Grand Prizes, after which the players with the most global points will be entitled to join the six men with guaranteed spots: American Fabiano Caruana (2792), Russians Sergey Karjakin (2743) and Ian Nepomniachtchi (2773), Polish Jan-Krzysztof Duda (2760), Azerbaijani Teimour Radyabov (2753) and French Alireza Firouzja (2804).

The other two phases of the Grand Prix will be in Belgrade (February 28 to March 14) and Berlin again (March 21 to April 4). The prize fund for each tournament amounts to 150 thousand euros.