Polgar Challenge winner
Anish Giri, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave are playing in the Candidates Tournament and therefore couldn’t accept their automatic qualifying spots for those in the top 8 of the tour standings, but Wesley So, Magnus Carlsen, Teimour Radjabov, Levon Aronian and Hikaru Nakamura all play.
17-year-old superstar Alireza Firouzja was voted back in by chess24 premium members, who also voted for Daniil Dubov, but the Russian was unable to play as he’s commentating on the Candidates from Yekaterinburg.
15-year-old Praggnanandhaa now has the chance to face off against the very best in the world after dominating the first event on the Julius Baer Challengers Chess Tour. He’s going to have some help preparing from the very best.
€29.90
A chance to face the very best
The fourth stage of the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour will be played on March 13-21, with Magnus Carlsen heading a 16-player field which will include tour leaders Teimour Radjabov and Wesley So. The organizers have decided to once again use the name ‘Magnus Carlsen Invitational’, the same name used in the first online event of the 2020 online tour organized due to the pandemic.
Before Tuesday’s qualifier, fourteen players had already been confirmed to participate, with Anish Giri and David Anton getting spots based on popular vote. The remaining two spots, however, were to be decided in a 4-player double round robin qualifier. Johan-Sebastian Christiansen was supposed to participate, but a last-minute incident prevented him from playing (the following is the first tweet of a six-part thread):
The 4-player qualifier saw the participants face each other twice
at a 10+5 time control, with the top two making it into the Magnus Carlsen
Invitational. You can click any result in the table below to open that game
with computer analysis:
And here’s the live commentary from Jan Gustafsson and
Laurent Fressinet.
Let’s take a quick look at how the top two made it to the
Magnus Carlsen Invitational, starting with the winner, Alan Pichot.
As you can see, the young Argentinian managed to repeat
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave’s feat in the Candidates of coming in as a late