The Meltwater Champions Chess Tour is a series of nine online chess tourneys that spans February to November, featuring the best of the best in the game of chess.
The tournaments in the tour are played sometime in the middle of each month across just more than a week, except for June, which effectively serves as a midseason breaking point. Of the nine tournaments, three are considered Majors and six are “Regular.”
February’s event is the Airthings Masters and starts on Saturday, Feb. 19, running until Feb. 26. It will have a total prize pool of $150,000, and the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour in total has a prize pool of $1.6 million.
The tournament will have 15 rounds of round-robin play between the event’s 16 players from Feb. 19 to 22. The top eight players from round-robin play will make it into a bracket that will be played out through the rest of next week.
Games will be 15 minutes plus 10 seconds per move. Once the playoffs begin, each round will be a four-game match. The finals will be two four-game matches, and if necessary, there will be a playoff. Playoffs will consist of two 5+3 games then Armageddon.
This weekend’s schedule can be found on chess24.com. The broadcast for the event will be streamed live on Chess24’s official Twitch and YouTube channels.
