WOMENS FIDE CHESS GRAND PRIX SERIES
ISTANBUL 2012

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The winner of each tournament will win 6,500 euros out of a prize fund of 40,000 euros and the overall winner of the series will win a further 15,000 euros at the end of the series.

This is the second time that such a series is being organized and is a significant development for the chess world.

The introduction of the Chess Grand Prix series means that there will be a World Championship contest annually start from 2010.

In that year, the Champion was be determined from the World Championship Knockout which will also be held in Istanbul Turkey and the following year, the World Champions will face the Winner of the Grand Prix series in a match for the title.

This will be one of the strongest women tournaments of all times and it is important to point out that there are three ex-world Champions taking part as well as the highest ranked women players in the world.

Format of the Womens Grand Prix 2012-2012

The Chess Grand Prix will be a series of six tournaments held over two years (2012-2012) in leading world cities. The selection process for the host cities was commenced in November 2010 and be finalized by the first FIDE Presidential Board in Istanbul in February 2012.

18 top world players will be selected to compete in these tournaments. Each player agrees and will contract to participate in exactly 4 of these tournaments.

Players must rank their preference of tournaments, once the final list of host cities is announced, and the dates are allocated to each host city.

FIDE reserves the right to assign players to tournaments according to the organizational needs and the players for each tournament will be announced before the cycle begins.

Each tournament will have 12 players playing over a schedule of fifteen days. The months allocated for the organization of the Chess Grand Prix tournaments are April, June and September of each respective year. These months have been selected to ensure there is no conflict with any other major event.

In view of an objective of harmonization of the FIDE chess calendar, the months for the Grand Prix for 2012/2012 are fixed as above.

The winner of the Chess Grand Prix series at the end of 2012 will play the Women World Champion in the third quarter of 2013 in a ten game match for the Womens World Championship title. Should the overall winner of the Chess Grand Prix also be the World Champion at the end of the Grand Prix series in 2012, then the Challenger rights will go to the second placed overall in the Grand Prix.

FIDE announces the Womens Grand-Prix 2012-2012 which will give qualification to the Womens World Championship match 2013. The schedule of the 6 events is the following:


1-15 August 2012, Rostov RUSSIA

1-15 September 2012, Shenzhen CHINA

8-23 October 2012, Nalchik RUSSIA

April 2012, Istanbul TURKEY

June 2012, Jermuk ARMENIA

September 2012, Kazan RUSSIA



The 10 qualifiers up to now are:

• 01. Hou, Yifan (World Champion 2010)
• 02. Ruan, Lufei (finalist world championship 2010)
• 03. Koneru, Humpy (semi-finalist world championship 2010)
• 04. Zhao, Xue (semi-finalist world championship 2010)
• 05. Kosintseva, Tatiana (by rating)
• 06. Stefanova, Antoaneta (by rating)
• 07. Kosintseva, Nadezhda (by rating)
• 08. Muzychuk, Anna (by rating)
• 09. Lahno, Kateryna (by rating)
• 10. Cmilyte, Viktorija (by rating)

plus 6 nominees, one from the each organiser.


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