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The 2019 Altibox Norway Chess Tournament is a ten-player single round robin taking place on June 3rd-15th in Stavanger. If a game is drawn, a sudden death encounter with 10 minutes for White and 7 minutes for Black follows, with Black having draw odds. If a match-up is decided on Armageddon, the winner gets 1½ points and the loser ½ point. A win in the classical yields 2 points. [More details about the format at the end of this article].
| # | Name | Country | Rating | Points |
| 1 | Magnus Carlsen | Norway | 2875 | 13 |
| 2 | Levon Aronian | Armenia | 2752 | 9 |
| 3 | Yu Yangyi | China | 2738 | 8½ |
| 4 | Wesley So | USA | 2754 | 8½ |
| 5 | Fabiano Caruana | USA | 2819 | 8½ |
| 6 | Ding Liren | China | 2754 | 8 |
| 7 | Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | France | 2779 | 7½ |
| 8 | Viswanathan Anand | India | 2767 | 7½ |
| 9 | Shakhriyar Mamedyarov | Azerbaijan | 2774 | 5½ |
| 10 | Alexander Grischuk | Russia | 2775 | 4 |
The organizers of the Altibox Norway Chess Tournament decided to deal with the problem of excessive draws in the elite (there is some disagreement in the chess world regarding this topic) by proposing a radical solution: every single game will have a winner. If a game is drawn, a sudden-death encounter will follow immediately (they will not wait for all the classical games to finish). Also, a faster time control will be used in the classical games, with each player getting two hours for the whole game — without increment!
From the Norway Chess press release:
Each player will have 2 hours on the clock per game, without any increments.
2 points will be given for victory, ½ point for draw and 0 points for loss.
The players that have games that end with a draw will continue in an Armageddon play-off only a few minutes after their game. The player with the white pieces will continue with white in the Armageddon game. With this, there will be a winner in each game due to the fact that black pieces will win if the game ends in a draw. The winner in the Armageddon play-off gets 1 point.
The Armageddon games will not add to the rating of the players, only contributing to the results list in the tournament, which is FIDE rated.
Players will get following points per round:
- Victory main game: 2 points
- Loss main game: 0 points
- Draw main game & loss Armageddon: ½ point
- Draw main game & victory Armageddon: 1½ points
