Cubans to participate in Chess World Cup

With the presence of 13 Latin American players, including five Cubans, it will be inaugurated on Thursday in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, the Chess World Cup, attended by 128 contestants.

The Cuban representatives will be the GMs Leinier Dominguez, Lazaro Bruzon, Yunieski Quesada, Isan Ortiz and debutant Ermes Espinosa.

Leinier, 25th in the world ranking with 2732 ELO points, will face in the first round tArgentine GM Federico Perez, who is the fourth player of his country with 2,563 ELO units.

In turn, the second Cuban player GM Lazaro Bruzon ( 2659), who appears 85th in the world rankings, will rival Santos Vidit, who ranks sixth in India (2651).

The GM Yunieski Quesada (2643) will have a tough opponent in the Russian Ernesto Inarkiev (2660), who is located in the 83rd seat of the world list.

Finally, the less experienced in the Cuban delegation, Isan Ortiz and Ermes Espinosa, will clash in the opening with the French Maxime Vachier Lagrave and Russian Sergey Karjakin respectively.

The Frenchman ranks 16th with 2,744 points while the Russian is12th with 2,762 units.

The other Latin Americans competing in the World Cup come from Brazil, Peru and Argentina, all with two players, and Venezuela and Chile , with one each.

The best of these players are the Peruvian GM Julio Ernesto Granda (2667) and Venezuelan Eduardo Iturrizaga, who will face Brazilian Alexander Fier and Israeli Maxim Rohstein in that order.

The top two players of this contest will earn tickets to the Candidates Tournament. The venue will be one of the newly built "Flame Towers ".

Each elimination round includes two games. In case of draw the players would play a tiebreaker match.

The first round will be played from September 11 to 13. The contest runs until October 4.