Meltwater Champions Chess Tour

Inquitus

1st. Magnus Carlsen
2nd. Hikaru Nakamura
3rd. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov
4th. Levon Aronian

Shak brought an epic fighting spirit to the Tournament in his Q/F and S/F matches there was an amazing number of wins by the black side, I am pretty sure in the KO stages Shaks games resulted in more black wins than white wins, he played with a style and a panache that was admirable. Thankfully as he qualified for the final 8 he is automatically invited to the next tournament, which is one of the majors kicking off later this month (May 23 – May 31 2021).

We will also have the all the top players available again now that the candidates has reached its conclusion, so Anish, Fabi, MVL etc. will all be back in contention. As a major the prize pool is bigger - $220k, and winning it, automatically gives you an invite to the OTB Finals at the end of the year in San Francisco (September 25 – October 3, 2021) Covid willing!

KO Bracket after Group Stages New in Chess Classic.



Overall standings in the year long competition.

The winners of the 3 Major's plus the 7 best in the overall standings automatically qualify for the Finals.

The Final only consists of one round-robin for the 10 players, spanning 9 days (1 matchup per day). Each matchup will comprise 4 rapid games. If the 4 points are split among the two players, then 2 blitz games are played, followed by Armageddon if the blitz games are split. 3 points are awarded for an outright win (no tiebreak needed), 2 points are awarded for a tiebreak win, and 1 point is awarded for a tiebreak loss.[4]

In addition to these points, the players start off with bonus points based on their Tour rankings coming into the Final. The player with the fewest Tour points gets 0 bonus points, and the other players are awarded half a point for every full 10 points they have more than the player with the least number. For example, if Player A has the fewest Tour points with 86, a Player B with 143 Tour points will be awarded 2.5 points, since they exceed Player A's total by 57 (no rounding).[4]

The player with the greatest sum of bonus points and points won in the Final will be crowned the Tour Champion.

The Rules give you a bonus for how many points you achieved during the preliminary rounds, click the link for a read.



Matches:

Final Day 1 Games*
Final Day 2 Games*

*Some pretty epic blunders especially in the Hikaru v Carlsen match!

cdeb

Couple of Carlsen's Valerenga teammates making up the there - I recognise Christiansen and Tari from when we (St Benildus) played against Valerenga in the European Club Cup in 2017. Funny how the chess world goes at times! Carlsen played for them the following year and only Tari remained.

Joedryan

Online blitz rubbish