The electronic chess competition which will determine a challenger for world champion Magnus Carlsen began on Friday in Moscow. Eight elite grandmasters are participating, with six numbered among the top ten of the universe. The list of participants is:
Hikaru Nakamura, USA – Winner of the 2014-2015 Grand Prix- Fabiano Caruana, USA – Runner-up of the 2014-2015 Grand Prix
- Sergey Karjakin, Russia – Winner of the 2015 World Cup
- Peter Svidler, Russia – Runner-up of the 2015 World Cup
- Viswanathan Anand, India – Loser of the 2014 World Championship Match
- Veselin Topalov, Bulgaria – Based on his 2015 FIDE rating
- Anish Giri, Netherlands – Based on his 2015 FIDE rating
- Levon Aronian, Armenia – Chosen as a Wild Card entry by FIDE
Readers may also find the FIDE ratings and rank of the competitors as of March 1, 2016 interesting. These are as follows: