FIDE Quietly Changes Dates For Gukesh

FIDE has quietly moved the dates of this year's World Championship match between GM Gukesh D and GM Javokhir Sindarov.

When Geneva was unveiled as host city last month, FIDE announced that the match would take place from November 25 to December 15.

World Chess—and pretty much everyone else—duly reported those dates.

But buried in the decisions from Sunday's FIDE Council meeting are the newly-approved regulations for the match, and the schedule has changed.

The World Championship is now officially listed as running from November 22 to December 13, with Game 1 taking place on November 24.

Players are expected to arrive as early as November 20, with the opening ceremony on November 22 and a second media day and technical meeting the following day.

The first three games will then be played on November 24, 25 and 26 before the first rest day.

Game 14 is scheduled for December 11, with tiebreaks—if needed—on December 12 and departures the following day.

FIDE has not highlighted the change in its announcement of the Council decisions.

Indeed, its original Geneva announcement still says the match will run from November 25 to December 15.

The new schedule also makes one recent omission rather easier to understand.

Gukesh is conspicuously absent from the star-studded field announced for the new Total Chess pilot event in Budapest.

That tournament is scheduled to run until November 21.

Under the newly-approved World Championship regulations, Gukesh is expected to be in Geneva the day before it finishes.

Even before the dates changed, squeezing both events into the calendar looked virtually impossible. Now it actually is.

The regulations confirm the familiar 14-game format, with the first player to reach 7.5 points becoming World Champion and rapid and blitz tiebreaks following if the score finishes 7–7.

They also contain one interesting insurance policy.

Should either Gukesh or Sindarov withdraw, Candidates runner-up GM Anish Giri will be invited to take his place. If another replacement is required, GM Fabiano Caruana is next in line.

The $2.5 million prize fund is also confirmed, but with an unusual new formula: each player will receive $200,000 for every classical game they win, with the remaining money divided equally. If the match goes to tiebreaks, the winner receives $1.3 million and the loser $1.2 million.

For now, however, the most immediately useful piece of information is considerably simpler.

If you're heading to Geneva to watch the youngest World Championship match in history, check your hotel booking.