Magnus Carlsen tops 16-player Opera Euro Rapid line-up
Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Teimour Radjabov and Wesley So are among the 16 participants for the $100,000 Opera Euro Rapid, the 3rd stage of the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour. The 9-day online event runs from February 6th to 14th and will once again be broadcast live on Eurosport, Norwegian TV and in multiple languages and styles here on chess24. The 16 players will be cut to eight on the first three days before the remaining participants play a knockout for the $30,000 top prize and crucial Tour points.
The line-up for the Opera Euro Rapid features 9 of the world’s top 11 ranked chess players on the January 2021 FIDE rating list. It consists of the 8 players who are leading the Tour standings, 2 players by public vote and 6 Wildcards. 2018 US Champion Sam Shankland, world no. 14 Leinier Dominguez and German no. 1 Matthias Bluebaum are making their Tour debut.
# Opera Euro Rapid Player FED Age Rating Rank Rapid Rating Rank Qualified by
1 Magnus Carlsen 30 2862 1 2881 1 Tour standings (4th)
2 Ding Liren 28 2791 3 2836 3 Premium vote
3 Ian Nepomniachtchi 30 2789 4 2778 9 Tour standings (7th)
4 Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 30 2784 5 2860 2 Tour standings (5th)
5 Levon Aronian 38 2781 6 2778 8 Tour standings (3rd)
6 Alexander Grischuk 37 2777 7 2784 7 Premium vote
7 Wesley So 27 2770 9 2741 21 Tour standings (2nd)
8 Teimour Radjabov 33 2765 10 2758 14 Tour standings (1st)
9 Anish Giri 26 2764 11 2731 25 Wildcard
10 Leinier Dominguez 37 2758 14 2786 6 Wildcard
11 Jan-Krzysztof Duda 22 2743 19 2774 10 Wildcard
12 Hikaru Nakamura 33 2736 20 2829 4 Tour standings (6th)
13 Vidit Gujrathi 24 2726 24 2636 116 Wildcard
14 Daniil Dubov 24 2710 29 2770 12 Tour standings (8th)
15 Sam Shankland 29 2691 44 2609 170 Wildcard
16 Matthias Bluebaum 23 2670 67 2562 265 Wildcard
The schedule is the same as for the Skilling Open and the Airthings Masters, with each day’s play this time beginning at 17:00 CET/11:00 ET/21:30 IST.
A 3-day Preliminary stage sees participants play each other once at rapid chess, with 15 minutes for all moves and a 10-second increment added to their clock each move.
The top eight advance to a knockout, where each tie is held over two days, with a 4-game rapid match each day. If the score in matches ends 1:1 a playoff is held, where two 5+3 blitz games are potentially followed by Armageddon, a single game where White has 5 minutes to Black’s 4, but a draw counts as a win for Black.