 The tournament featured nine out of the top ten players from the FIDE rating list published in September 2018 with only the current World Champion Magnus Carlsen being absent.Former World Champion Vishwanathan Anand returned to the Chess Olympiads on board one for India following a break of twelve years.Other players who played in the open section include the former World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik, the challenger in the World Chess Championship 2018 Fabiano Caruana, as well as the former challengers Sergey Karjakin and Boris Gelfand.