Clutch Chess Pays $125,000 to Win, With Points Rising Daily

The Saint Louis Chess Club hosts the Clutch Chess: Champions Showdown from 27 to 29 October, and the field and format are now set. Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu and Javokhir Sindarov will play an 18-game rapid event for $425,000.

What makes the event unusual is where the money sits. The payouts are only half the story, because the scoring itself is built to keep the standings open until the last day.

The prize ladder

First place pays $125,000, second $94,000, third $72,000 and fourth $62,000. The gap between first and last is $63,000, so even a poor tournament is well paid.

Individual wins carry bonuses too: $1,000 on day one, $2,000 on day two and $3,000 on day three. Those bonuses follow the same rising curve as the points.

A jackpot built from draws

The money allocated to drawn games goes into the Champion’s Jackpot. It is paid to the eventual winner on top of the first-place prize.

That gives every draw a cost. A player who splits the point is, in effect, adding to a pot that only one rival can collect.

Ties are settled on the board. Two players level on top play a single Armageddon game, and a three- or four-way tie goes to an Armageddon round-robin.

Why the scoring matters

Each day is a double round-robin, so every player meets every opponent twice, once with each colour: six games a day. The time control is 10 minutes with a 5-second increment from move one.

A win scores 1 on day one, 2 on day two and 3 on day three. A draw scores half a point, then 1, then 1. By the last day a draw is worth a third of a win, and draw offers are barred until Black has completed move 60.

Last year’s inaugural edition shows how violent the swings can be. Magnus Carlsen scored four straight wins on the final day, beating Gukesh and Caruana twice each, and finished on 25½ points with two games to spare.

Caruana took second on 16½, Nakamura had 14 and Gukesh 10. Gukesh had led alone after day one.

This year’s field

Carlsen is not back, but Caruana and Nakamura return. Pragg and Sindarov are making their debuts.

Praggnanandhaa won this year’s Grand Chess Tour by beating Caruana in the final in Saint Louis in August, after turning around a six-point deficit on the last day. That is the kind of comeback the Clutch format is designed to allow, and he has already done it in this city.

Sindarov won the Candidates in April and meets Gukesh Dommaraju for the World Championship in November. This event gives him rapid games against three experienced opponents less than a month before that match. He was in Saint Louis recently, playing the last two Grand Chess Tour events.

Caruana lost the U.S. Championship to Wesley So in a rapid playoff, which we covered. Nakamura is among the world’s highest-rated players despite being mostly inactive.

How to watch

Play starts at 12.00 noon local time (18.00 CET) on all three days. The Saint Louis Chess Club streams on YouTube and Twitch, with Maurice Ashley, Yasser Seirawan and James Dash Patterson commentating.