Saint Louis Chess Club Hosts Champions Showdown: Chess 9LX Event

The Saint Louis Chess Club hosts its annual exhibition tournament Champions Showdown: Chess 9LX, featuring living legend GM Garry Kasparov and nine of the world’s top active GMs competing over the popular variant Chess960.

Also referred to as Fischer Random, Chess960 is a variant in which the back ranks are randomized anew in every game, using simple setup rules to total a possible 960 different starting positions, the result of which nearly eliminates the value of opening memorization and preparation. Not knowing the order of the home rank pieces until 15 minutes before each game begins, players are forced to fall back on their creativity to navigate through fresh positions.

Hikaru Nakamura, 2019 9LX (SLCC / Lennart Ootes)

The Chess9LX tournament will play Wednesday, September 8 through Friday between 10 of the world’s top GMs, including reigning Chess960 World Champion Wesley So, who won FIDE’s first-ever championship of the variant in 2019; as well as Hikaru Nakamura, Levon Aronian and Russia’s Peter Svidler, who together were Chess960 World Champions for six years when the international championship was held unofficially in Germany through 2009.

Champions Showdown: Chess 9LX Field
Player	URS Rating
GM Hikaru Nakamura	2807
GM Wesley So	2789
GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave	2784
GM Fabiano Caruana	2784
GM Levon Aronian	2773
GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov	2754
GM Leinier Dominguez	2739
GM Peter Svidler	2728
GM Sam Shankland	2705
GM Garry Kasparov	2545

Peter Svidler, 2019 9LX (SLCC / Crystal Fuller)

Before Chess9LX, the Champions Showdown will kick off on Tuesday, September 7 with the Ultimate Moves exhibition event, a casual team-based game between the super-GM lineup and Saint Louis Chess Club benefactor Rex Sinquefield.

Ultimate Moves will begin Tuesday at 1:00 p.m. central, while Chess9LX games will begin Wednesday and daily at 2:00 p.m. COVID restrictions have kept out live spectators from these events, though the action can be watched live online on the Saint Louis Chess Club’s YouTube and Twitch.TV channels.

Games on each day will begin at 2:00pm CDT (GMT-5) from September 8-10 for Champions Showdown: Chess 9LX. The tournament will include expert commentary featuring GM Maurice Ashley. Due to COVID-19 precautions there will be no live spectators allowed but fans can watch the action online at uschesschamps.com or on the Saint Louis Chess Club's YouTube and Twitch.tv channels.