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These are the major events on the chess calendar for June 2019, with links to their official sites. When live games are available, we'll also add these along with any links to our News page coverage of each tournament.
The Candidates tournament for women takes place in Kazan, Russia from May 31 to June 17. In addition to the EUR €200,000 prize fund, the largest in history for a tournament of this kind, the winner earns the right to challenge World Champion Ju Wenjun in match play. Live from 12 Noon UTC (14:00 CEST / 8 AM EDT) with video commentary by GM Evgeny Miroshnichenko and IM Elisabeth Paehtz courtesy FIDE.
Stories on the Women's Candidates
The 7th Norway Chess tournament in Stavanger is experimenting with a novel anti-draw format (see Norway Chess Armageddon gambit one of the most commented stories of 2018!), where a result is guaranteed in every pairing of every round, thanks to a tiebreak in the case of a drawn classical game. The time control of the ten-player round-robin tournament is also reduced to two hours per player per game, with no bonus per move.
Stories on Altibox Norway Chess
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave won the blitz tournament with an impressive score of 7½/9!
Click or tap any result to open the game via live.chessbase.com
| # | Name | Country | Rating | Points |
| 1 | Magnus Carlsen | Norway | 2875 | 13½ |
| 2 | Levon Aronian | Armenia | 2752 | 10½ |
| Yu Yangyi | China | 2738 | 10½ | |
| 4 | Fabiano Caruana | USA | 2819 | 10 |
| Wesley So | USA | 2754 | 10 | |
| 6 | Ding Liren | China | 2754 | 8½ |
| 7 | Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | France | 2779 | 8 |
| Viswanathan Anand | India | 2767 | 8 | |
| 9 | Shakhriyar Mamedyarov | Azerbaijan | 2774 | 5½ |
| Alexander Grischuk | Russia | 2775 | 5½ |
Poikovsky, Russia hosts this annual tournament, a 10-player round-robin, with the red-hot Vladislav Artemiev, alongside a mix of experienced and up-and-coming young players: Dmitry Jakovenko, Vladimir Fedoseev, Wang Hao, Krishnan Sasikiran, Rauf Mamedov, Anton Korobov, Ivan Saric, Vladislav Kovalev and Andrey Esipenko.
Poikovsky is deep in the middle of Russia
Artemiev wins Karpov Poikowsky Tournament
A new experiment from World Chess, the former rights-holder of the World Championship that continues to operate the Grand Prix series for FIDE. The is similar to and will compete for attention with Norway Chess. According to their press release:
The show will feature eight of the world’s top grandmasters playing a series of two blitz games, with each player having three minutes to play the entire game or be declared the loser. Should the two blitz games not produce a clear winner, then the players will proceed to an Armageddon game tie-breaker.
The match format is double-elimination, with a prize-fund of $50,000, and the eight announced players are:
Kramnik retired from professional chess, but it's nice to see he's still willing and interested in playing.
The players wear heart rate monitors, which World Chess calls "a first for professional chess matches" but has in fact been tried before, for example at the Unofficial Fischer Random (Chess960) World Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura in 2018.
World Chess logo for its "Armageddon Series 2019"
Karjakin win kicks off World Chess "Armageddon" series
Newly announced is yet another 10-player round-robin, this time in Israel and featuring top Israeli players Maxim Rodshtein, Boris Gelfand, Evgeny Postny and Ilja Smirin and Tamir Nabaty, joined by international stars Leinier Dominguez, Peter Svidler, Daniil Dubov, Luke McShane and Pavel Eljanov. Netanya is the name of the city and the stadium where the tournament takes place and the event carries a prize fund of USD $100,000.
All stories on the Netanya International
Following the rapid and blitz in Abidjan in May, the Grand Chess Tour moves to the Croatian capital of Zagreb for a 12-player round-robin tournament featuring all the top stars and a whopping USD $325,000 prize fund.
This will be the first classical event and will feature all 12 full members of the GCT including World Champion Magnus Carlsen.
