FIDE World Cup Round 7 (Final)

All the games of the World Cup are available in PGN format.

The first ten places, who move on to the next phase of the FIDE World Championship. All five 2700-rated players among the sweet 16 ended up at the top of the list:
1. Aronian, Levon (ARM, 2724) - in tiebreak
2. Ponomariov, Ruslan (UKR, 2704)
3. Bacrot, Etienne (FRA, 2725) - in tiebreak
4. Grischuk, Alexander (RUS, 2720)
5. Bareev, Evgeny (RUS, 2717) - in tiebreak
6. Gelfand, Boris (ISR)
7. Rublevsky, Sergei (RUS) - 1.5 to 0.5
8. Gurevich, Mikhail (BEL)
9. Kamsky, Gata (USA) - in tiebreak
10. Carlsen, Magnus (NOR) - the lowest rated (2570) and of course youngest of the sweet 16

The remaining players are:
11. Malakhov, Vladimir (RUS) - 1.5 to 0.5
12. Vallejo Pons, Francisco (ESP)
13. Dreev, Alexey (RUS) - in tiebreak
14. Van Wely, Loek (NED)
15. Lautier, Joel (FRA) - final score was tied, but Lautier had Black in the drawn seventh Sudden Death game
16. Sakaev, Konstantin (RUS)

If Kasparov and Kramnik decline to play in the 2006 Candidate Matches as is widely expected, then Shirov (based on his rating) and Malakhov (based on his #11 place finish) would take their places, as explained extremely well by ChessBase.

Ivanchuk (UKR, 2748) lost out because (a) he was not rated one point higher on either the July 2004 or January 2005 rating lists as that would have been enough to move him ahead of Bacrot on the rating list and (b) he lost in the second round to Cheparinov of the World Cup tournament.

The two other 2700-players were Shirov (ESP, 2710) and Radjabov (AZE, 2704) who both lost in round 3, to M. Gurevich and L. van Wely, respectively.