On the Calendar: The Grand Chess Tour and the St. Louis Chess Club
Coming soon to an online - or physical - chess club near you.
The Grand Chess Tour will be contested at least one more year - in 2023 - and the schedule is now available. There will be five events, starting with the Superbet Chess Classic in Bucharest from May 4-16 and culminating in the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis from November 19 through December 3. Hopefully it will keep going, and not put out of existence by the Meltwater Tour and Chess.com’s various mega-events (e.g. the Global Chess Challenge and the Speed Chess Championship). The Meltwater Tour and the Chess.com events have made things better for chess fans (as well as for the top players, who are making a very nice income from them), but they are (practically) entirely online; it would be a pity for the top players to only play online, aside from world championship cycle events and the Olympiad.
If you live in or near St. Louis, you should visit the St. Louis Chess Club & Scholastic Center when you get a chance. It’s an attractive club, and at least two of the buildings by it have been commandeered by our game as well. They have “normal” club events there, I believe, but one should take the opportunity to catch one or more of their closed tournaments (including but not limited to the U.S. Championships, the St. Louis Rapid & Blitz, and the Sinquefield Cup) in person. Here’s the full projected line-up for 2023.