$500,000 Champions Chess Tour Finals To Be Played Live In Toronto

You've been watching as GM Magnus Carlsen won the Airthings Masters to kick off the 2023 Champions Chess Tour (CCT). You've kept following to see GM Hikaru Nakamura take down the Chessable Masters. Then GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov won the ChessKid Cup, and the Aimchess Rapid is currently underway. 

Now, Chess.com is excited to announce that the Champions Chess Tour Finals, with its $500,000 prize pool, will be held live on-site in Toronto, Canada from December 9 to December 16, 2023. This same city hosted the finals of the wildly successful 2022 Global Chess Championship. Carlsen, Nakamura, Abdusattorov, and five other chess stars will all be there, aiming for the $200,000 first-place prize.

This will be a marquee event for the fans, and not just the thousands watching online. There will also be opportunities to engage for those lucky enough to be in Toronto during the week of play. Stay tuned for more information on that.

You won't want to miss the game's two biggest stars, who locked down their spot in the Finals as soon as they could. In the first event of the CCT, a 132-move battle reminiscent of a game in his last world championship helped Carlsen secure the first automatic bid into the Finals.

Nakamura didn't have to wait too long to take his spot, however. Needing to win two matches in the Chessable Masters Grand Final against GM Fabiano Caruana—due to having lost an earlier match in the double-elimination format—Nakamura did just that.

The 18-year-old 2021 World Rapid Champion Abdusattorov joined the party in the third leg of the CCT, also defeating Caruana in the Grand Final (although only needing to win one match).

Caruana's strong performance through the first half of the CCT makes him likely, although not guaranteed, to also be joining the field in Toronto.

Established in 2020, the Champions Chess Tour is the premier tournament series in rapid chess, and now you will have the chance to see all of the top players in action as they try to become the next CCT champion.