The third stage of the Champions Tour organized by Norwegian world champion Magnus Carlsen has started today.
Azerbaijani chess player Temur Rajabov is competing at the Opera Euro Rapid, Offsideplus.az reports.
The experienced grandmaster faced 5 chess players on the first day of the match. Rajabov, who defeated Sam Schenklen of the United States in the second round with white pieces, drew with Mattias Blubaum of Germany in the first round, Lenier Perez Dominguez of the United States in the third round and Alexander Grishuk of Russia in the fifth round.
Currently, the Azerbaijani grandmaster has 3 points from 5 games. He shares the 4th and 6th places with Maxime Vashie-Lagrave of France and Anish Giri of the Netherlands. Magnus Carlsen leads the table with 4 points. US representative Wesley So and Russian Jan Nepomnyashi took 2-3 places with 3.5 points each.
Rajabov will face Anish Giri (Netherlands), Yan Nepomnyashi (Russia), Hikaru Nakamura (USA), Vidit Gujrati (India) and Danil Dubov (Russia) today.
After 3 days of preliminary matches, 8 out of 16 chess players will qualify for the playoffs.
The tournament will end on February 14. Teymur Rajabov became the champion in the second stage of the Champions Tour, defeating the representative of Armenia Levon Aronian in the final of the Airthings Masters.