The Grand Chess Tour (GCT), a circuit of chess tournaments for the world's best players, will expand at its fifth edition to eight tournaments. One of them will be held in Bucharest, between November 4 and November 11.

Other new tournaments will be held in Abidjan (Cote d’Ivoire), Kolkata (India), and Zagreb (Croatia).

The event in Bucharest, titled Superbet Rapid & Blitz, will be a rapid and blitz tournament. The tournaments held in Abidjan, Paris, St Louis, and Kolkata are of the same type. Croatia GCT and the Sinquefield Cup will be classical tournaments. The GCT Finals will be held in London as part of the 2019 London Chess Classic.

Among the chess players participating in the event are Norwegian chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen, the current World Chess Champion, Italian-American chess grandmaster Fabiano Caruana, Indian chess grandmaster and former World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand, and Russian chess grandmaster and former World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik.

The Superbet Rapid & Blitz in Bucharest is the sixth event in the tour, after tournaments in Paris, Zagreb, Abidjan, and St. Louis, Missouri (two events). It will be followed by the tournament in Kolkata, and the finals in London.

Tour participants will compete for a prize fund of USD 1.75 million. The prize money on offer for the classical tournaments has been increased to USD 325,000 per event (USD 90,000 for the 1st place and USD 60,000 for the 2nd) while the prize fund for the GCT Finals in London went up to USD 350,000 (USD 150,000 for the 1st place and USD 100,000 for the 2nd).

(Photo: Pixabay)

editor@romania-insider.com