Meltwater Champions Chess Tour from 13th to 21st March

A series of 9 tournaments throughout 2021. 9 days of chess each tournament. The top players of the world. The winner of the tour will be decided in the final in September.

Argentina’s Alan Pichot will be the first South American player to compete in the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour after topping the Magnus Carlsen Invitational qualifier with an unbeaten performance. He’s joined by Swedish no. 1 Nils Grandelius, who admitted his performance hadn’t been “the most convincing of efforts”. It included rejecting a draw offer when a draw was all he needed to qualify!

The inclusion of Alan Pichot and Nils Grandelius means the 16-player line-up for the Magnus Carlsen Invitational is now complete, with the action starting on Saturday March 13th at 17:00 CET. The final two places were decided in a qualifier tournament that featured twists and turns even before it began. Max Warmerdam came in as a replacement for the originally planned Andrey Esipenko, while Johan-Sebastian Christiansen had to pull out at the very last moment.