Speed Chess Championship Invitational
The Speed Chess Championship Invitational is a 16-player knockout tournament from which the winner will qualify for the 2020 Speed Chess Championship Main Event. It will be held Sunday, October 25, 2020 and has a $8,000 prize fund.
How to watch?
Tune in at Chess.com/tv on Sunday, October 25 at 9:00 Pacific / 17:00 Central Europe for commentary by GM Robert Hess and IM Danny Rensch.
Format
The Speed Chess Championship Invitational is a 16-player knockout tournament. In the preliminary, quarterfinal, and semifinal rounds they will play two 5+1 games, four 3+1 games, and eight 1+1 games. In the final, the players will play three 5+1 games, five 3+1 games, and 10 1+1 games.
All matches will run simultaneously with each time control starting for all games at the same time. Once a player has clinched the win, the match will conclude.
If a match is tied after the last 1+1 bullet game, a tiebreak of four additional 1+1 games is played as a mini-match. If the match is still tied after the mini-match tiebreaker, a single armageddon game will be played: White 5+0, Black 3+0, Black gets draw odds. The player with the highest Chess.com blitz rating at the start of the armageddon chooses their color.
Prizes
The total prize fund is $8,000 with $1,500 going to the winner, who also qualifies for the 2020 Speed Chess Championship.
Who will play?
The invited participants have all played in many of the Speed Chess Grand Prix tournaments but either narrowly missed out on qualification or received a wildcard invite from Chess.com.
Speed Chess Invitational | Participants
| # | Fed | Name | Username | FIDE Blitz |
| 1 | Jan-Krzystof Duda | @Polish_fighter3000 | 2799 | |
| 2 | Dmitry Andreikin | @fairchess_on_youtube | 2782 | |
| 3 | Sergey Karjakin | @SergeyKarjakin | 2765 | |
| 4 | Alexander Grischuk | @Grischuk | 2765 | |
| 5 | Peter Svidler | @PSvidler | 2754 | |
| 6 | Baadur Jobava | @exoticprincess | 2748 | |
| 7 | Vidit Gujrathi | @vidityt | 2735 | |
| 8 | Jeffery Xiong | @jefferyx | 2724 | |
| 9 | Oleksandr Bortnyk | @Oleksandr_Bortnyk | 2723 | |
| 10 | Daniil Dubov | @Duhless | 2722 | |
| 11 | Maxim Chigaev | @Fandorine | 2646 | |
| 12 | Grigoriy Oparin | @OparinGrigoriy | 2628 | |
| 13 | David Anton | @tptagain | 2622 | |
| 14 | Daniel Naroditksy | @DanielNaroditsky | 2608 | |
| 15 | Eric Hansen | @erichansen | 2568 | |
| 16 | Le Tuan Minh | @wonderfultime | 2408 |
What's at stake?
Besides the $1,500 first prize, the players will be fighting for a spot in the prestigious Speed Chess Championship Main Event, Chess.com's flagship event that will run once again this year with world-class players fighting for a $100,000 prize fund. The 2020 Speed Chess Championship will run November 1st -December 13.
Earlier, GM Nihal Sarin (@nihalsarin) qualified for the Main Event as the winner of the Junior Speed Chess Championship. Also, GM Vladimir Fedoseev (@Bigfish1995) qualified as the runner-up of the Super Swiss. The Russian GM finished behind GM Hikaru Nakamura (@Hikaru), who is seeded into the Speed Chess Championship as last year's winner.
Four more players have qualified via the Speed Chess Grand Prix: GMs Vladislav Artemiev (@Sibelephant), Nodirbek Abdusattorov (@ChessWarrior7197), Parham Maghsoodloo (@Parhamov), and Haik Martirosyan (@Micki-taryan).
