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Notes from the organizer: In anticipation of the upcoming World Chess Championship in November, I've spent a bit of the past week coming up with a tourney based around it. I'm not very good at introductions, so I'll just get on with explaining it while trying not to sound boring.

A bit of stats for you all first: the World Chess Championship, funnily enough, decides the World Chess Champion. So far there have been 16 (debatably 20) champions, and the incumbent is the Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, who will attempt to defend his title in a little over 6 months against Ian Nepomniashchy of Russia over 14 games. But the process through which Mr. Nepomniashchy went is surprisingly long (at least that's what I thought), and here it is.

To qualify for the World Championship, you must win the Candidates' Tournament. To qualify for the Candidates' Tournament, read below...

The first qualifying event is the Chess World Cup, which is a simple single-elimination event, nothing fancy. Two-legged matches, then, in the event of a tie, speedy two-legged matches. Two places go to the finalists.

Next is the Grand Swiss Tournament, which may or may not seem a little less familiar. It uses the Swiss system, which is like a shorter round-robin in that not everyone plays everyone else, but each player still partakes in a set number of rounds. Each round of fixtures is decided using a set of rules that ensures that people still play opponents with the same or a similar running score. At the end of it, the two players with the most points (1 for a win, 0.5 for a draw) will qualify for the Candidates Tournament.

Thirdly, there is the Grand Prix (through which our challenger Nepomniashchy qualified). A series of 4 (might be subject to change depending on how many people sign up, I haven't decided yet) single-bracket tournaments in the vein of the best-of-2's held at the Chess World Cup. Each player can participate in 3 of those tourneys. 8 points go to the winner, 5 to the runner up, 3 for SF-ists, and 1 for QF-ists, with an extra point for each game won without a tiebreaker. When the four tourneys have finished, the two players with the most points will have booked their place in the Candidates' Tournament.

Finally, there is the path of qualification by rating. In the chess world, the non-qualifier with the highest average Elo rating over the previous 12 months is invited. For this tourney, I'll make it the two highest non-qualifiers with the most Pro Rank points on average over the previous 12 weeks (at the time of the Grand Prix's end). Normally it would be just one, but there's also a place for the loser of the previous WCC, and there hasn't been an Apto-Chess Championship match yet, so I'll fill in the gap here.

Now for the actual Candidates Tournament. It's a double round-robin between the eight qualifiers, simple as. The top two finishers will contest the first ever Apto-Chess Championship.

By the way, I've decided to choose the Champions League format for this tourney, as I feel it's the closest to playing as White and Black, it fits in with the two-legged thing, and it increases the chance of draws (which happen a lot in chess — all 12 regular games of the 2018 World Championship were drawn).

So aye, I think this is going to be a pretty lengthy tournament — probably not ideal for a first tourney, but we'll see how we get on. Actually, I'm quite looking forward to this :D

To close out this spiel, I'll leave youse with a chess-related quote from the 18th-century author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.”

If you somehow decide to sign up, then I wish you the best of luck :)

Ran from: 15 May – 14 June 2021. Format: Hebrew Conundrum Attack. Matches: Best-of-24. Approved.

Signed up: Ian Volante, Tom Cappleman, Matthew Tassier, Johnny Canuck, Graham Harrison, Matty Artell, Andy SC, Hazel Drury, Christy Cooper, Stephen Holford, Edward Ashcroft, Fiona T, Ronan M Higginson, Dave Robjohns, M S R, Dave Kempshall, John Doherty, Dan Spinks, Wesley Barton, Adam Latchford, James Thomson, Piaras Last-Name.

Fixtures: 0. Completed: 0.