Meltwater Champions Chess Tour Finals begun

It’s Carlsen-Duda, So-Mamedyarov, Aronian-MVL, Radjabov-Artemiev and Giri-Nakamura today as the $300,000 Meltwater Champions Chess Tour Finals begin. The event is being played online on the chess24 Playzone, but there’s a hybrid element, since Magnus Carlsen, Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Anish Giri are all in one venue in Oslo. Peter Leko returns to commentate, and will be joined by Lawrence Trent, with Danny King and Simon Williams to follow for later rounds. Don’t miss all the action here on chess24 from 11:00 ET/17:00 CEST/20:30 IST!

After 9 events over the space of 11 months the $1.6 million Meltwater Champions Chess Tour is about to reach its conclusion, with 10 players battling it out for the overall title. You can check out all the pairings below.

It’s a round-robin, so the 10 players face each of their rivals once over the course of 9 rounds, with each match starting with 4 rapid games where the players have 15 minutes for all their moves plus a 10-second increment from move 1. If the match ends in rapid chess the winner gets 3 points and the losing player 0.

Only if the match is tied 2:2 do we get a blitz playoff, with two 5+3 games. If still tied there’s a single Armageddon game, where White has 5 minutes to Black’s 4, but a draw counts as a win for Black. There are 2 points for the winner of a playoff and 1 for the losing player.

The action is online, but with three players, Magnus Carlsen, Anish Giri and Jan-Krzysztof Duda competing from Oslo. Two of them meet in Round 1 as it’s Carlsen-Duda.

oin us for 10 days of intense top-level chess action!

See also:

• Meltwater Champions Chess Tour website
• $300k Meltwater Champions Chess Tour Finals set for lift-off!
• Meltwater Champions Chess Tour Finals: A look at the players