Announcing Aimchess Rapid: 4th Event Of $2 Million Champions Chess Tour Kicks Off This July

Chess.com’s $2 million Champions Chess Tour, the game’s elite online event, can reveal its next tournament: the 2023 Aimchess Rapid. Running from July 10 to 14, the Aimchess Rapid is named after the unique chess learning and analytics tool Aimchess, available on our Learn page. It is the fourth leg of six on the Tour before the Playoffs and Tour Finals in December. 

As before, the five-day Aimchess Rapid will follow the now-familiar format of 56 players sorted into three divisions decided by double-elimination.

Four world-class grandmasters have already qualified for the event’s elite Division I tier from last month’s ChessKid Cup. They are ChessKid Cup winner Nodirbek Abdusattorov, the runner-up Fabiano Caruana, Dutch star Jorden van Foreest and Vladimir Fedoseev. In total, $235,000 is at stake, with $30,000 going to the winner.

Four more will join them in Division I, but first need to battle through a fascinating Play-In on June 12 to book a place at the top table. The Play-In, which will also be available to watch on Chess.com, is open to all grandmasters, and among them is expected to be two-time Tour champion and world number one Magnus Carlsen.

The Norwegian did not qualify automatically for the Aimchess Rapid after he missed the ChessKid Cup. He now faces a tough task to win through the Play-In’s nine-round Swiss and a “Match Play” stage to get into the main event’s top tier.

U.S. star Hikaru Nakamura leads the overall Tour points table with 270, followed by fellow countryman Caruana with 250, Carlsen with 225, and the young hotshot Abdusattorov with 200. Nakamura also will have to make it through the Play-In.

In each event, the players are fighting to qualify for the end-of-season Playoffs and, eventually, the Tour Finals. A total of $600,000 is at stake in December out of the overall Tour prize pool of $2 million.

Last year’s Aimchess Rapid was won by GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda. The Polish star topped the round-robin Prelim stage before knocking out Carlsen, the previous year’s winner, on the way to a memorable final victory over Shakhriyar Mamedyarov.

Live coverage with commentary of this year’s Aimchess Rapid will be provided by the Chess.com team in Oslo. More information will be released later.