FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship 2019

The FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship 2019 (WFRCC) was the first world championship in Fischer random chess officially recognized by the international chess federation FIDE. Previous unofficial championships had been held, with the most recent winner being Magnus Carlsen in 2018. The competition started on April 28, 2019, with the first qualifying tournaments, which took place online and were open to all interested participants; and continued with further rounds up to the quarter-finals, which were also online. The semi-finals and final were played over the board between October 27 to November 2, 2019, in the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Bærum, Norway. The winner of the final was Wesley So, defeating Magnus Carlsen 13.5–2.5, to become the first FIDE world champion in Fischer random chess. Over the course of the competition, various time controls were applied, with longer games being weighted more heavily.

The championship included several rounds with different time controls, organizational forms and access requirements.

The first qualifying round was open to all interested chess players without a title and was played online via the chess server Chess.com. Each of the 32 groups played a Swiss-system tournament with 9 rounds and a time control of 10 minutes for the entire game plus an increment of 2 seconds per move. The top 5 players from each group qualified for the second qualifying round, for a total of 160 players.

The second qualifying round was open to the 160 qualifiers from the first qualifying round as well as all FIDE title holders. Each of 12 groups played a Swiss-system tournament with 9 rounds, also with a time control of 10 minutes plus 2 seconds increment. The top 7 players from each group qualified for the third qualifying round, for a total of 84 players.

The 84 qualifiers from the second qualifying round were divided into 6 groups of 14 players each. Each group was supplemented by two invited chess players. Each group of 16 players played a single-elimination tournament. In each round of the tournament, the two players played a "minimatch" consisting of two games with opposite color assignments. In case of a tie, another minimatch with shorter time control was played, and another one with even shorter time control if the tie persisted. If there was still no decisive result after the third minimatch, the pairing was decided by an Armageddon game.

While the first two qualifying rounds brought a number of surprises, the winners of the third qualifying round were all near the top of the FIDE world rankings in standard chess. Nevertheless, some prominent players were knocked out, including Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Sergey Karjakin, Alexander Grischuk and Leinier Domínguez. The following 6 players qualified for the quarterfinals:

Two more players were seeded directly into the quarterfinals: The runner-up in the World Chess Championship 2018 in standard chess, Fabiano Caruana, and the runner-up in the unofficial Fischer Random world championship match 2018, Hikaru Nakamura.

The quarterfinals were played online from October 4 to 6 2019. They can be viewed on Chess.com.