The opening ceremony of the fifth Grand Slam Masters Final was held on Sunday morning, September 23rd in the Ibirapuera Park. Officials, organizers and the six players attended the ceremony, which was open to the public. Chief Arbiter Herman van Riemsdijk performed the drawing of lots. The results were: 1. Vishy Anand 2. Levon Aronian 3. Fabiano Caruana 4. Magnus Carlsen 5. Sergey Karjakin 6. Francisco Vallejo. This resulted in the following pairings for today: Anand-Vallejo, Aronian-Karjakin and Caruana-Carlsen.

Gilberto Kassab, the mayor of Sao Paulo, was present as well as Regina Celia, the Municipal Secretary of Education. She stressed the importance of teaching chess in public schools and pointed out that the program now reaches 53,000 students. On Saturday a simul was organized by the city's Department of Education. Together with a number of Brazilian players, the top grandmasters played against 120 pupils of public schools.

Here are some more details about the tournament. The rate of play is 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, then 60 minutes for the remaining moves with a 10-second increment. Players are not allowed to agree to a draw without the arbiter’s permission. In case both players request it to him, the arbiter will make his decision after consulting with the technical assistant. And again the football scoring system is used: 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw and 0 for a loss.

Like last year, Sao Paulo will host the first half of the Grand Slam Masters Final. Rounds 1-5 will be held September 24th-29th with a rest day on the 27th. The second half will be held, as always, in Bilbao, Spain. Rounds 6-10 will be held October 8th-13th, with a rest day on the 11th.