Pairings for World Cup Round 4: Left Bracket first, Right Bracket bottom starting with seed 2.
- 1. Boris Gelfand 2758 (ISR)
- 17. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 2718 (FRA)
- 8. Alexander Grischuk 2736 (RUS)
- 9. Dmitry Jakovenko 2736 (RUS)
- 61. Viktor Laznicka 2637 (CZE)
- 13. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov 2719 (AZE)
- 28. Nikita Vitiugov 2694 (RUS)
- 12 Sergey Karjakin 2723 (UKR)
- 2. Vugar Gashimov 2758 (AZE)
- 50. Fabiano Caruana 2652 (ITA)
- 7. Ruslan Ponomariov 2739 (UKR)
- 23. Etienne Bacrot 2700 (FRA)
- 3. Peter Svidler 2754 (RUS)
- 14. Alexei Shirov 2719 (ESP)
- 59. Wesley So 2640 (PHI)
- 22. Vladimir Malakhov 2706 (RUS)
Number 61 seed, Viktor Laznicka is one of the big stories but there also are a lot of people who will be watching the #59 seed Wesley So and #50 seed Fabiano Caruana, who carries dual citizenship with Italy and the US, but there's a lot to be said about being the #1 player of a European Country to get you invited to great tournaments like this one. He really has no competition in Italy to really bother him, but in the US, then you get to deal with US's Hikaru Nakamura, which I think might cause a strain on his game, but who knows, he might also thrive here, but it sure wouldn't be by playing chess...that's the sad fact about the US...no great chess sponsors, which would help a lot, people in the US tend to look upon chess players as "nerds" so who knows how many "could have been" GM's might have come out of the US if it was looked upon like a serious sport in Europe and now Asia? But with American sports athletes making multi-million dollar sports contracts, some downright outrageous, plus sports gear endorsements...man, chess has no chance.
What's really sad, is the game could help so many students understand visualization of problems, it's proven to help so much that there was a "Chess In Schools", maybe still is, program. Try to get sponsors for that over the local little league team (nothing against that, I loved little league), little league will always win. We need to get our kids exercising their minds, not their thumbs playing video games. We can wish though.
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