Levon Aronian tops Chessable Masters field

World no. 5 and Goldmoney Asian Rapid winner Levon Aronian is now the top seed for the Chessable Masters, the 8th event on the $1.6 million Meltwater Champions Chess Tour. Levon is joined by the runner-up in the previous event, Vladislav Artemiev, and Indian star Harikrishna, who complete the 16-player line-up for the tournament starting Saturday July 31st at 17:00 CEST. The pairings are also now out, including Firouzja-So in Round 1.

When we announced the Chessable Masters six days ago there were three players still to be decided, largely because of the World Cup. With World Champion Magnus Carlsen still going strong he misses his first event of either the Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour or the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, while the new top seed (though his rating is exactly the same as Mamedyarov's) is a player who made it to Sochi but didn’t get to push a pawn in anger because of health issues — world no. 5 Levon Aronian!

He’s joined by the player he beat in the Goldmoney Asian Rapid final, Russian rapid and blitz specialist Vladislav Artemiev, and by Indian no. 2 Harikrishna.

The pairings are now also out for the 15 rounds of the preliminaries, with one of the most varied fields we’ve seen. Levon starts against Jorden van Foreest, Harikrishna is Black against Hikaru Nakamura and Artemiev takes on Women’s Rapid Champion Humpy Koneru. Women’s World Champion Ju Wenjun starts against Liem Quang Le, while the world’s youngest grandmaster Abhimanyu Mishra will face a daunting first day: David Anton, Wesley So, Hikaru Nakamura, Levon Aronian and Humpy Koneru.

It all kicks off on July 31st at 17:00 CEST with the Chessable Masters Preliminaries followed from August 3rd by the Chessable Masters Knockout.

See also:

• Champions Chess Tour website
• All the games with computer analysis and commentary at chess24: Prelims | Knockout
• Chessable Masters features Ju Wenjun and Abhimanyu Mishra