Gata Kamsky, as the winner of this tournament, played an eight-game match against Veselin Topalov in 2008, for the right to be the challenger for the World Chess Championship 2010.

Three other players who had recently competed in the World Chess Championship 2007 in Mexico – Péter Lékó, Aleksandr Morozevich and Boris Gelfand – elected not to play.

Lékó and Morozevich refused to take part as a form of protest against the special privileges given for the inclusion of Kramnik and Topalov in the World Chess Championship Cycle.

High seeds needing tie breaks to progress included Vassily Ivanchuk (1), Magnus Carlsen (10), Ruslan Ponomariov (14) and Wang Yue (15).

Players going through on the regular games are: Alexei Shirov (seeded 5), Michael Adams (7), Evgeny Alekseev (8), Magnus Carlsen (10), Gata Kamsky (11), Vladimir Akopian (12), Dmitry Jakovenko (13), Ruslan Ponomariov (14), Wang Yue (15) and Ivan Cheparinov (31).

Winners were Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu (33) (eliminating top seed Vassily Ivanchuk), Krishnan Sasikiran (35), Evgeny Bareev (41), Levon Aronian (4), Peter Svidler (6), Sergey Karjakin (17).

[14] In the regular time control games, Shirov, Ponomariov, Carlsen, Karjakin and Cheparinov won their respective matches against Akopian, Sasikiran, Adams, Nisipeanu and Wang Yue.