So after a couple months of rumors, the Grand Chess Tour was officially announced today. It's a cooperative effort between Norway Chess, the Sinquefield Cup, and the London Chess Classic. 8 of the top 10 players in the world (by the January 2015 list) plus a ninth Super-GM-to-be-named-later will play all three events, and each event will also include a wild card chosen by the organizers.

Grand Prix style scoring will produce an overall winner of the series, and the combined prize fund exceeds a million dollars.

http://grandchesstour.com

One question: WHEN? Sounds awesome...especially with the field of competition that's out there right now. Some great games should come out of this series.

This year. First leg will be Norway Chess, from June 13-28. Second leg will be the Sinquefield Cup, August 21-September 3. Final leg will be the London Chess Classic from December 3-15.

Roster is Carlsen, Caruana, Nakamura, Topalov, Grischuk, Anand, Giri, Vachier-Lagrave, and Aronian. I apparently misheard something yesterday when I thought the ninth player hadn't been chosen yet.

Curious about the organizer wild cards. Seems likely that Sinquefield will go American and invite Wesley So (who along with Kramnik are the only two current top-ten players in the field). London will presumably invite Mickey Adams (local player, and top 20 in the world), but what about Norway?

If they want to go local, Hammer is the #2 Norwegian player, and probably the favorite for the invite... but at #76 in the world he'd be over 100 elo below his opponent even when he plays the #9 seed. They could also invite So or Kramnik and just go for the even more ridiculously strong field. Or (and I don't see this as likely, but I do think it'd be amazing) they could invite an "up and comer" type player, and give the world a chance to find out how he could handle a field this strong. Wei Yi would be an awesome wild card choice imo.

It'll probably be Hammer though.

It wouldn't surprise me if somebody invited Hou Yifan! It goes to show that can easily make a 6 figure salary in chess if your in the top ten, but your lucky to make $30,000 a year if your in the top 10-100 (unless your Yifan)

2700chess.com is currently listing Wesley So as a participant in all three GCT events. Did I miss an announcement? Are they scrapping the organizer's wild card to add him?

They changed it: So is now only shown as the 10th player for the Sinquefield Cup. Not sure if even that is official, yet, but it seems like a good assumption.

The other two events now show "and another player" again.

I'm quite disappointed that the selection process for this tour was to lazily look at one random month's rating list and give the top 10 people a call. Tournament organizers already worship at the altar of Elo too much, and now solely a high Elo gets you a golden ticket to three of the biggest money tournaments.

This is just going to encourage point-sitting even more. When players like Nakamura think twice about entering a national championship (or other [not Cat.20 tournament]) because they might lose a few rating points. Because that's good for chess.

And yes, it will encourage draws more, as players will understandably opt to protect their rating when they are 'in the club'.

How about a grand chess tour for players who have... won tournaments? Shouldn't that be what it's about?

Excellent post ^^^