The top five in the world, headed by Magnus Carlsen, are part of an elite eight-man field in the $250,000 Magnus Calrsen Invitational online chess, that begins on April 18.
Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Ding Liren, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Anish Giri, Hikaru Nakamura and 16-year-old sensation Alireza Firouzja will battle it out for the $70,000 winner’s share.
The richest online event in chess will be played on a league-cum-knockout format. After a double round-robin league, the top four players move to the knockout semifinals. The final is slated for May 3.
Each encounter will include four rapid games, with 15 minutes for all the moves, plus 10-second increments after every move.
On Wednesday, in the Pepe Cuena Invitational, Vidit Gujrathi plays Russia’s Peter Svidler, and P. Hari Krishna clashes with Poland’s Jan-Krzysztof Duda.
In this best-of-12-game quarterfinals, the time-control is, 3 minutes plus 2-second increment from Move 1. If the players are locked at 6-6, blitz games will be played to break the tie.
The winner of the Vidit-Svider match faces Spain’s David Anton Gujjarro while the winner of the Hari-Duda encounter meets Russia’s Vladislav Artemiev.