 In March, Wang finished shared first at the Reykjavík Open, together with compatriot Wang Hao (who won on tiebreak) and Hannes Stefansson.In his super-tournament debut in April–May 2008 at the 1st FIDE Grand Prix in Baku, he came joint first place with Vugar Gashimov and Magnus Carlsen, scoring 8/13 (+3−0=10) with a performance rating of 2806.Wang called it a "nightmare start" when his planned flight departure from Beijing on the 18th was delayed because of bad weather and did not arrive in Azerbaijan until the early morning of the 21st, thereby missing the opening ceremony as well as having to face the top seed (Magnus Carlsen) with black later on the same day.