World Champion Magnus Carlsen takes on 21-year-old Argentine Grandmaster Alan Pichot in Round 1 of the $50,000 Banter Blitz Cup, with the full pairings tree now published. In total 132 players will take part, including 109 grandmasters, 68 of them rated 2600 or above, making this one of the strongest individual chess events after the World Cup.
For the first round we've paired top seed Magnus Carlsen with a strong opponent, Alan Pichot, after consulting with both players, so we get off to an interesting start. We're going to hold four preliminary matches, which will mainly feature chess24 and PlayMagnus staff, in order to give an opportunity to as many players who signed up as possible. The rest of the pairings are made according to FIDE ratings, just as at the World Cup, though with some slight adjustments to make things as diverse as possible. That mainly means ensuring, for instance, that two Spanish speaking players don’t meet in Round 1.
In case you missed it, here's how the Banter Blitz Cup works:
This is what's at stake:
And here's the schedule so far, with the links leading to the live streams - the country code after a name is the language spoken, not necessarily where the player comes from. This list will constantly be updated:
You can also find all the live streams on our Shows Page.
To replay the games you can either go to a player's profile page (you'll find a clickable link to everyone's profile under the video of their livestream on the Shows page) or check out the Banter Blitz Cup tournament. Note that games won't be shown live there and there are a few issues with the layout, but it should be a convenient way to replay matches.
See also:
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