Tournaments | Magnus Carlsen
The Champions Chess Tour: The ChessKid Cup
Who will join Nakamura, Caruana and So?
The Champions Chess Tour 2023 (CCT) is a chess event that lasts for an entire year. It features past Champions Chess Tour editions and merges that with the Chess.com Global Championship. The entire event consists of only six tournaments and eventually ends with live in-person finals.
The ChessKid Cup is the third leg of the tour, with the Airthings Masters being the first leg and Chessable Masters as the second. The event starts with a phase of qualifications that is open to all non-grandmaster titled players (IM, FM, CM, etc).
The qualified players join the grandmasters in the Play-in stage and the top players move to an Knockout stage that has three divisions. Each division has its separate prize fund and players score Tour Points according to their placement within each division. At the end of the sixth event, the players with the most Tour Points win a place in the Champions Chess Tour Playoff.
The top five players currently in the Tour Standings are:
- Hikaru Nakamura with 250 tour points.
- Magnus Carlsen with 225 tour points.
- Fabiano Caruana with 150 tour points.
- Wesley So with 105 tour points.
- Arjun Erigaisi with 56 tour points.
- Magnus Carlsen, the #1 player in the world, has withdrawn from the ChessKid Cup and his spot will be determined through the Play-in.
With a total $2,000,000 prize fund and the most challenging competitors in the world, the Champions Chess Tour is arguably Chess.com’s most important event.
The ChessKid Cup starts on May 1 at 8 a.m. PT/17:00 CEST.
