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Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour 2020
May 14, 2020
Well, there was the Grand Chess Tour:
1 Superbest Chess Classic Bucharest Romania May 3-16
2 Paris Grand Chess Tour June 22-29
3 Croatia Grand Chess Tour July 2-9
4 Saint louis Rapid and Blitz August 22-31
5 Sinquefield Cup August 29-Sept 11
and FIDE Grand Prix events and the World Championship cycle. All appear to be on hold.
Into this void, Magnus Carlsen has stepped up with the Carlsen Tour.
The online Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour has a combined prize fund of $1 million:
April 18 – May 3 | Magnus Carlsen Invitational | $250,000
May 19 – June 3 | Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge | $150,000
June 20 – July 5 | Online Chess Masters | $150,000
July 21 – August 5 | Legends of Chess | $150,000
August 9 – 20 | Grand Final | $300,000
First up is the Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge, an online version of the Lindores Abbey Chess Stars that took place for the first time in Scotland in May 2019. It features 4 players we saw in the Magnus Carlsen Invitational - Magnus Carlsen, Ding Liren, Hikaru Nakamura and Alireza Firouzja - who are joined by 8 players from Russia, Armenia, USA, Poland and China making their Tour debut: Alexander Grischuk, Levon Aronian, Wesley So, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Sergey Karjakin, Wei Yi, Yu Yangyi and Daniil Dubov.
The format has changed from the Magnus Carlsen Invitational to put more emphasis on the knockout section. This time the preliminary stage will be held over just 3 days, with the players playing each other once in 11 rounds of 15-minute + 10-second increment rapid chess. The bottom 4 will be eliminated, while the remaining 8 players go forward to the quarterfinals.
The quarterfinals, semi-finals and final will all be best of 3 mini-matches (the first player to win 2 mini-matches wins), where each mini-match consists of four 15+10 rapid games. If a mini-match ends 2:2 a single Armageddon game will be played: White has 5 minutes to Black’s 4 but Black wins if the game ends in a draw.
But that’s not all! The winner qualifies for the 4-player $300,000 Grand Final. If the same player wins two or more tournaments then the extra place(s) will be decided on a points system – you get 10 points for finishing runner-up, 7 for reaching the semi-finals and 3 for the quarterfinals.
The top 4 players are guaranteed a place in the next tournament, in this case the Online Chess Masters starting on June 20th. Magnus Carlsen, Ding Liren and Hikaru Nakamura qualified in this way from the Magnus Carlsen Invitational - Fabiano Caruana was unable to play and has been given a spot in the Online Chess Masters instead.
https://chess24.com/en/read/news/the...-era-for-chess
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The Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge action begins at 16:00 CEST on Tuesday, May 19th and with live commentary on chess24 in at least 9 languages. Chess fans will also have a chance to play the stars in Banter Blitz sessions, while the players will be regular guests on the live commentary.
Peter Svidler will be doing live commentary. Unlike Grischuk, he did not want to play nonstop in Play for Russia, the Steinitz Memorial and Lindores Abbey starting soon afterwards. He may well play in one or both of the remaining events to qualify for the final
May 14, 2020
Well, there was the Grand Chess Tour:
1 Superbest Chess Classic Bucharest Romania May 3-16
2 Paris Grand Chess Tour June 22-29
3 Croatia Grand Chess Tour July 2-9
4 Saint louis Rapid and Blitz August 22-31
5 Sinquefield Cup August 29-Sept 11
and FIDE Grand Prix events and the World Championship cycle. All appear to be on hold.
Into this void, Magnus Carlsen has stepped up with the Carlsen Tour.
The online Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour has a combined prize fund of $1 million:
April 18 – May 3 | Magnus Carlsen Invitational | $250,000
May 19 – June 3 | Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge | $150,000
June 20 – July 5 | Online Chess Masters | $150,000
July 21 – August 5 | Legends of Chess | $150,000
August 9 – 20 | Grand Final | $300,000
First up is the Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge, an online version of the Lindores Abbey Chess Stars that took place for the first time in Scotland in May 2019. It features 4 players we saw in the Magnus Carlsen Invitational - Magnus Carlsen, Ding Liren, Hikaru Nakamura and Alireza Firouzja - who are joined by 8 players from Russia, Armenia, USA, Poland and China making their Tour debut: Alexander Grischuk, Levon Aronian, Wesley So, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Sergey Karjakin, Wei Yi, Yu Yangyi and Daniil Dubov.
The format has changed from the Magnus Carlsen Invitational to put more emphasis on the knockout section. This time the preliminary stage will be held over just 3 days, with the players playing each other once in 11 rounds of 15-minute + 10-second increment rapid chess. The bottom 4 will be eliminated, while the remaining 8 players go forward to the quarterfinals.
The quarterfinals, semi-finals and final will all be best of 3 mini-matches (the first player to win 2 mini-matches wins), where each mini-match consists of four 15+10 rapid games. If a mini-match ends 2:2 a single Armageddon game will be played: White has 5 minutes to Black’s 4 but Black wins if the game ends in a draw.
But that’s not all! The winner qualifies for the 4-player $300,000 Grand Final. If the same player wins two or more tournaments then the extra place(s) will be decided on a points system – you get 10 points for finishing runner-up, 7 for reaching the semi-finals and 3 for the quarterfinals.
The top 4 players are guaranteed a place in the next tournament, in this case the Online Chess Masters starting on June 20th. Magnus Carlsen, Ding Liren and Hikaru Nakamura qualified in this way from the Magnus Carlsen Invitational - Fabiano Caruana was unable to play and has been given a spot in the Online Chess Masters instead.
https://chess24.com/en/read/news/the...-era-for-chess
______________-
The Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge action begins at 16:00 CEST on Tuesday, May 19th and with live commentary on chess24 in at least 9 languages. Chess fans will also have a chance to play the stars in Banter Blitz sessions, while the players will be regular guests on the live commentary.
Peter Svidler will be doing live commentary. Unlike Grischuk, he did not want to play nonstop in Play for Russia, the Steinitz Memorial and Lindores Abbey starting soon afterwards. He may well play in one or both of the remaining events to qualify for the final