The Champions Chess Tour is back: All you need to know

Author: Maria Fragaki

The fifth leg of the Champions Chess Tour, the Julius Baer Generation Cup Knockouts, kicks off on August 30th, featuring among others Magnus Carlsen, Wesley So, and Nodirbek Abdusattorov.

Carlsen went all out showing his emotions after winning the armageddon game to win the FTX Crypto Cup. Image: Champions Chess Tour.

General info

The Champions Chess Tour 2023 (CCT) constitutes a significant and expansive chess circuit encompassing a sequence of six events spanning the entirety of the year. Concluding with in-person Finals, this tour brings together the foremost chess luminaries on a global scale. Distinguished by a substantial prize pool amounting to $2,000,000, the CCT stands as the most substantial and noteworthy event organized by Chesscom to date.

Players

In the Knockout stage, 56 players will compete in three separate divisions based on their Match Play performance.

Division I: eight players.
Four invited players (Carlsen, So, Abdusattorov, and Lazavik).
The four winners of the matches between the top-8 players from the Play-in Swiss.

Division II: 16 players.
The four losers of the matches between the top-8 players from the Play-in Swiss.
The 12 winners of the matches between players placed 9th to 32nd in the Play-in Swiss.

Division III: 32 players.
The 12 losers of the matches between players placed 9th to 32nd in the Play-in Swiss.
The 20 winners of the matches between players placed 33rd to 72nd in the Play-in Swiss.

Format

• Each division features a double-elimination knockout bracket.
• The time control is 15+3.
• In Divisions I and II, there are four-game matches in the Winners Bracket and two-game matches in the Losers Bracket.
• In Division III, there are two-game matches in both the Winners and Losers Brackets, and a four-game match in the Grand Finals.
• In the event of a Grand Finals reset, where a player from the Losers Bracket wins the first set, the second set will consist of a two-game match.
• A bidding armageddon game with a 15-minute base time breaks ties.

Top 5

The Champions Chess Tour standings so far are:

1. Magnus Carlsen with 375 CCT points, and $75,000 in prizes
2. Fabiano Caruana with 280 CCT points, and $60,000 in prizes
3. Nodirbek Abdusattorov with 275 CCT points, and $55,000 in prizes
4. Hikaru Nakamura with 270 CCT points, and $57,500 in prizes
5. Wesley So with 205 CCT points, and $45,000 in prizes

The total prize fund of the Tour is $2,000,000, out of which $235,000 is destined for the 2023 Julius Baer Generation Cup.

Source: Chesscom