The 16 protagonists of the Berlin Grand Prix were announced and with it the challenge for the dispute of the World Chess Crown, scheduled for 2023 in Madrid.

Havana, January 25 (RHC)-- The 16 protagonists of the Berlin Grand Prix were announced and with it the challenge for the dispute of the World Chess Crown, scheduled for 2023 in Madrid.

The joust that will start next February 4 in the German capital will be the first moment of a well-defined cycle, in which the best players of the moment will be involved. The question is only one... Who will become the challenger of the Norwegian Magnus Carlsen.

For now the attention will be reduced to the first step of the road, to a call involving men like the Chinese Ding Liren, the Americans Wesley So, Hikaru Nakamura and Levon Aronian, as well as the Russian Alexander Grischuk, the Indian Pentala Harikrishna and the Spaniard Alexey Shirov.

Also there will be Cuban naturalized American Leinier Dominguez, Hungarian Richard Rapport, French Etienne Bracot, Indian Gujarathi Vidit, Russians Danill Dubov, Vladimir Fedoseev and Grigoriy Oparin, and German Vincent Keymer.

All of them are part of a group of 24 climbers with options to participate in two of the three competitions and accumulate points to define the two final qualifiers.

It so happens that there are already six players who have a safe place in the Candidates Tournament for the World Crown (Madrid/June-July 2022): the American Fabiano Caruana, the Russians Sergey Karjakin and Ian Nepomniachtchi, the Pole Jan-Krzysztof Duda, the Azeri Teimour Radyabov and the French-Iranian Aliereza Firouzja.

Returning to the Grand Prix, which starts in February, the elimination system will be a double round-robin league system in four groups. The winners of each section will advance to the semifinals and the winners will compete in the final.

There is a points table according to the position occupied and this will be the gauge to define the two qualifiers for the Candidates' League.

The first of the tournaments will end on February 17, followed by the Belgrade stop (February 28 to March 14) and a return to Berlin to close the cycle from March 21 to April 4.