The 1st event of the $2M Champions Chess Tour 2023, Airthings Masters, kicked off yesterday with the Play-In phase which determined which players will join Magnus Carlsen and Wesley So in the main event which will be played from 6-10 February.
The Play-In was played in 9 rounds, swiss system, with the top finishers advancing to Match Play. Match plays featured 2-game matches with eventual Armageddon determining who qualifies to which Division of the event.
Division 1 will feature: Magnus Carlsen vs Alexey Sarana, Alireza Firouzja vs Arjun Erigaisi, Wesley So vs Rauf Mamedov, and Gukesh D vs Hikaru Nakamura.
Division 2 features: Ian Nepomniachtchi vs Alan Pivhot, Denis Lazavik vs Alexandr Predke, Daniil Dubov vs Martyn Kravtsiv, Raunak Sadhwani vs Yu Yangyi, Dmitry Andreikin vs Bogdan Daniel Deac, Nodirbek Yakubboev vs Matthias Bluebaum, Fabiano Caruana vs Diptayan Ghosh, Vladimir Kramnik vs Salem Saleh.
Division 3 features: Gadir Guseinov vs Sanan Sjugirov, Nikolas Theodorou vs Leinier Dominguez, Praggnanandhaa vs Mikhail Antipov, Eltaj Safarli vs Arseniy Nesterov, Vincent Keymer vs Maxim Matlakov, Mikhail Demidov vs Aram Hakobyan, Xu Xiangyu vs Mahammad Muradli, and Iniyan P vs Jose Martinez.
