Vietnamese grandmaster to join Champion Chess Tour

"I’m invited to compete from April 24 to May 2 and want to put all my focus on this online tournament," Liem told VnExpress on Wednesday.

Champion Chess Tour 2021 is a 10-month long series of 10 online chess tournaments featuring top world players, with a prize money pool of $1.5 million. All games are held on the website chess24.com and broadcast on streaming site Twitch. The series runs from Nov. 22, 2020 to Oct. 3, 2021.

Among the 10 tournaments in the series, six are labeled as regular, three as major and one as the final. Each tournament takes place over nine days.

Liem, 30, has previously competed in the first regular tournament that took place from Nov. 22 to 30 last year. At the time, he got eight points and peaked at 10th among 16 players. He drew against the world’s top player Magnus Carlsen.

The upcoming tournament will be the third regular and fifth tournament overall of the series. In the previous two regular tournaments, Filipino-American grandmaster Wesley So won both. In the two major tournaments, Azerbaijani Teimour Radjabov and Dutchman Anish Giri were named winners.

In the major tournaments, eight of 16 spots are given to the current top eight players in the series rankings. The winner of the preceding regular tournament also gets a spot if not already in the top eight. The rest of the spots are decided by wild cards.

For the final, eight of 10 spots are given to the three winners of the major tournaments and the top five players in the series rankings. The final two spots are given to the best "Tour Ambassadors," chosen by organizers.