GM Nijat Abasov

Nijat Abasov is an Azerbaijani grandmaster and the 2017 Azerbaijani Chess Champion. That year he won the Baku Open tournament, and another notable tournament win came at the 2016 Zurich Christmas Open. Abasov became a GM at the age of 15 and entered the list of the top-100 players in the world in November 2019. He has ranked as high number three on the list of players in Azerbaijan.

At the 2023 FIDE World Cup, Abasov made a surprise run into the semifinals as the 69th seed. Along the way, he defeated IM Rodwell Makoto and GMs Laurent Fressinet, Anish Giri, Peter Svidler, and Vidit Gujrathi. Abasov finally fell to GM Magnus Carlsen in the semifinals and GM Fabiano Caruana in the third-place match. As the fourth-place finisher, Abasov became an alternate for the 2024 Candidates Tournament as of the conclusion of the World Cup. However, the expectation was that he would receive a spot when Carlsen declined to participate, and that happened officially on January 13, 2024. Abasov ended up finishing in eighth place in the Candidates.