FTX Road to Miami begins this Sunday

Levon Aronian, Richard Rapport and Anish Giri are among the star players competing in the FTX Road to Miami, the 5th event on the $1.6 million Meltwater Champions Chess Tour. The 16-player tournament starting on chess24 this Sunday, July 10th is a prelude to the 2nd Major of the Tour, the FTX Crypto Cup, which will be held in Miami, Florida, with World Champion Magnus Carlsen returning and a $210,000 prize fund plus a $100,000 Bitcoin bonus.

Champions Chess Tour: FTX Road to Miami | Day 1 | Commentary by Peter Leko & Lawrence Trent

The FIDE Candidates Tournament is barely over, but the big events just keep on coming. The 5th stage of the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, the FTX Road to Miami, starts at 18:00 CEST on Sunday July 10th, with Levon Aronian top seed. Here are his Day 1 pairings.

As you can see, he’s facing two established stars in Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Anish Giri, as well as Women’s World Champion Ju Wenjun and 18-year-old Indian prodigy Arjun Erigaisi.

The field features three of the Candidates — Teimour Radjabov, Richard Rapport and Jan-Krzysztof Duda, while Radoslaw Wojtaszek is making his tour debut alongside young US stars Jeffery Xiong and Sam Sevian. In fact there are no less than six US players, including Leinier Dominguez, Sam Shankland and 19-year-old Hans Niemann.

Check out the full pairings for all 15 rounds of the preliminary stage of the $150,000 tournament below.

chess24.com

The Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz will be held online and will showcase some of the world’s top rapid and blitz players including World Champion Magnus Carlsen and a few of the American favorites — Hikaru Nakamura, Wesley So, Leinier Dominguez and Jeffery Xiong. The ten players will be competing for a $250,000 prize fund in nine rapid games and eighteen blitz games over five days of play.

Games will start daily at 1:00pm CDT (GMT-5) from September 15-19 with expert commentary featuring GM’s Yasser Seirawan and Maurice Ashley and WGM Jennifer Shahade. Viewers can watch live on uschesschamps.com or on STLChessClub’s YouTube and Twitch.tv channels.

uschesschamps.com

The top four American chess superstars are set to battle online from Tuesday, May 26 — Friday, May 29, 2020 in a brand new and exciting knockout format called Clutch Chess, created by Grandmaster Maurice Ashley, commentator, author, and chess innovator. With $100K in prize money up for grabs, the competitors will prove their mettle under mounting pressure as the tension builds towards the end of each match. This format promises to keep fans glued to their screens by making it impossible for any match to lose steam — even if one player takes a big lead. This unique online tournament will be a prelude to an even larger event, adding four of the world’s best international Grandmasters June 6-14, 2020 with additional tournament details coming soon.

“Clutch Chess will be exciting, faced-paced and guaranteed to leave blood on the board,” said Ashley. “This format will keep the players, commentators and especially the fans engaged until the very last move.”

The four confirmed Grandmasters are Fabiano Caruana (World number 2), Wesley So (World number 8), Leinier Dominguez (World number 6 in Rapid) and Hikaru Nakamura (World number 1 in Blitz). This quartet recently led Team USA to a silver medal in the prestigious Online Nations Cup, and is one of the favorites to win gold at the next chess Olympiad.

Clutch Chess will begin with two semifinal matches of twelve games played over two days, with the winners advancing to the finals. Games 1-4 and 7-10 of the matches will be scored using the traditional method of 1 point for a win and half a point for a draw. Games 5, 6, 11 and 12 — the final two games each day — are worth extra points and bonus prize money for a decisive result. The new scoring system means that a match isn’t over until the very end; with six points available in the last two games, anything can happen.

Clutch Chess, A New Online Tournament May 26-29

The Saint Louis Chess Club will host a series of four matches, the Champions Showdown, November 9-14. In an exciting twist, the three top American players and current World Champion, Magnus Carlsen, will face their opponents in 10 games of rapid and 20 games of blitz. Tournament play will begin November 9 at 1 p.m., with World Champion Magnus Carlsen and No. 1 Chinese Grandmaster Ding Liren beginning November 11 at 1 p.m.

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