The World Is Watching: New Champions Chess Tour Season Starts Today With The Chessable Masters

Chess.com’s glittering Chessable Masters, the first leg of the new Champions Chess Tour (CCT) season, kicks off on Wednesday at 11 a.m. ET / 17:00 CET with the grandmaster Play-In.

Grandmasters from around the world will compete in the initial stage, a huge Swiss tournament hosted on Chess.com, that is open to anyone with a GM title and players who won through via qualifying. But only 69 will survive for day two.

Then, on Thursday, the remaining players plus four prequalified grandmasters—former world title challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi, Dutch number-one Anish Giri, Vladislav Artemiev, and U.S. star Sam Sevian—battle it out for placings in the tournament’s divisional structure.

On Friday the double-elimination Knockout stage commences when world number-one GM Magnus Carlsen, GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and GM Vladimir Fedoseev join the fray.

Those three have already earned spots in the Chessable Masters Division I based on their performance in last year’s last CCT event, the AI Cup. In total, 56 players will be sorted into divisions I, II, and III.

The Champions Chess Tour is Chess.com’s premier year-long rapid chess event consisting of four main online tournaments, increasing the intensity leading up to the live season-ending Tour Finals.

The overall winner will be crowned Tour Champion, the highest annual honor conferred by the world’s largest chess platform. The Tour prize pool is $1.7 million.

This year’s Chessable Masters will be its fifth edition which runs through February 7. The CCT’s second event will be held on May 8 to 15, the third from July 17 to 24 and the fourth from September 25 to October 2. The end-of-season Tour Finals are set for December 14 to 21.

The CCT is now starting its fifth season since it started life as the Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour in 2020 and its second since it joined the Chess.com community.

GM Magnus Carlsen, the world number-one, has dominated so far winning the inaugural event bearing his name and all three series since it was renamed the CCT.

In December, Carlsen defeated GM Wesley So 2.5-1.5 in Toronto to claim yet another CCT title. Will 2024 be the year he is stopped?

The Chessable Masters will last eight days with the winner of Division I taking home $30,000 and a spot in the Tour Finals.

Day 1 of the tournament is the Play-In open to all GMs and winners of qualifying events. The Play-In consists of a nine-round Swiss with the top 69 moving on to Day 2 where the players plus four qualifiers from the previous event compete again to be placed in the tournament’s three divisions.

Days 3 to 8 see 56 players fight it out in the Knockout. Divisions I (eight players), II (16 players) and III (32 players) feature two or four-game matches using the 10+2 time control with bidding Armageddon tiebreaks if needed.

GM Hikaru Nakamura is the Chessable Masters defending champion, while the previous winners are GM Ding Liren (2022), So (2021) and Carlsen won the inaugural event in 2020.

You can keep up with all the chess action live on Chess.com, or on our Twitch and YouTube channels! Play starts at 11 a.m. ET / 17:00 CET.