Teimour Radjabov wins Airthings Masters Tournament
GM Teimour Radjabov won the recently-conducted Airthings Masters Event on Sunday, hosted as a part of the Champions Chess Tour. The Champions Chess Tour is an idea conceptualized by the World Champion Magnus Carlsen and his company, the Play Magnus Group. The tournament is played virtually on the Chess24 site.
Teimour Radjabov outplayed Levon Aronian in the final match. With his victory, he clinched the $60,000 first prize. In total, the prize pool for the Airthings Masters was $200,000.
All eyes were on Magnus Carlsen in the Airthings Masters, who was the favorite going into the tournament with his superior online play throughout 2020. However, Carlsen was knocked out by upcoming player Daniil Dubov.
Magnus Carlsen's online chess tour
The Champions tour is the successor to the Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour that ran in the early part of 2020 and had a prize fund of $1 million. The Champions tour, which began in November 2020, is on a much larger scale with a higher prize fund of $1.5 million in total over 10 tournaments. It is also broadcast live on TV networks.
The Champions Chess Tour will run from November 2020 to October 2021. There will be 10 events in the tour, and two of them have been completed so far. The Skilling Open and the Airthings Masters have been played out already, with Wesley So winning the Skilling Open and Teimour Radjabov clinching the Airthings Masters.
These events are played over 9 days without any breaks and follow a rapid/blitz time format. Each tournament has prizes, and the overall winners would be eligible to participate in the tour finals that will be held in San Francisco in the title sponsor Meltwater's office.
7 events now remain in the Champions Tour, with 2 major tournaments with a prize fund of $200,000 per event and 5 regular tournaments with a pool of $100,000 per event. The final will be played from September 25th - October 3rd 2021 with $300,000 up for grabs.