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The American Qualification tournament for the FIDE World Cup 2021 will take place 22 May – 30 May. As an American Continental Championship, the event consists of two hybrid format stages: preliminary and knock-out.

The preliminary stage took place 7-9 May with participation of 107 players rated under 2500. Top ranked players qualified for the knock-out event open to all USA flagged players rated 2500 or higher.

The Azerbaijan Chess Championship 2021 took place on May 4-14 in Nakhchivan.

In a strong 12 players field, GM Vasif Durarbayli became National Champion for the first time in his chess career and also earned qualification for the World Chess Cup 2021.

FIDE Women’s World Cup 2021 will take place 10 July – 4 August 2021 in Sochi, Russia, simultaneously with the FIDE Open World Chess Cup.

The 2021 FIDE Women’s World Cup will be played in 7 rounds, knock-out system, with 103 players and a prize pool of 676,000 dollars. 
Most of the participants are already known with Canada (Zone 3.2) as the only remaining federation to run qualifiers in early June.

The European Individual Chess Championship 2021 will take place 26 August – 5 September in Reykjavik, Iceland. The event will be held in a historic venue at Hotel Natura.

FTX Crypto Chess Cup 2021 is going to start this week. The Meltwater Champions Chess Tour delivers a world first for its next event – an elite-level bitcoin chess tournament. The star-studded FTX Crypto Cup offers a record prize pot for an online tournament of $320,000 (variable, depending on the bitcoin current price)

FTX Crypto Cup live

FTX Crypto Cup will be live daily on Chessdom.com with live games and video commentary.

BBC World Service ran a video segment presenting the life of chess streamers and the recent explosion of interest in chess video broadcasts. BBC correctly taps into the shifting fortunes – nowadays young WGM/WIM/FM players are the avant-garde of chess. The reason: “Queen’s Gambit” by Netflix.

See: The Queens Gambit – with WIM Lara Janzelj and WIM Teja Vidic

The famous chess youtuber Agadmator continues his previews on the Nepo – Carlsen 2021 match. The first video of the series was titled “Does Nepo stand a chance against Magnus”, Agadmator analyzed a key game in Nepo’s career vs Peter Leko.

Now Agadmator looks at another Nepo game, this time from the Chess24 Banter Blitz.

Koivisto, the open source chess engine by Kim Kåhre and Finn Eggers, is the winner of the Qualification League of the Top Chess Engine Championship. Koivisto secured the QL title with a last round win, collecting 20,0/26 – 15 wins, 10 draws, and one loss.
ClassicAra, one of the newcomers to TCEC, is second with 19,0/26, while Booot gets the bronze with 18,0/26.

Final ranking of the Qualification League

Charlotte Chess Masters 2021 will take place July 16-18. It is the 3rd edition of the Masters and will be a 5 round USCF and FIDE-rated event featuring guaranteed prizes and strong competition in 2 sections – Masters A (2200+ FIDE) and Masters B (1900+ USCF).

Full information about the Charlotte Chess Masters

The African Individual Chess Championship 2021 is going to take place 17-28 May in Lilongwe, Malawi. The event has separate sections for men and women. Both tournaments will be 9 rounds Swiss.