Top Tournaments in July [2020]

This month I could have re-used the title of last month's Yahoo post, No Online Chess Yahoos (June 2020), where 'Yahoo' is a code word for chess news that has been picked up by the mainstream press. Since that is even less interesting the second time than it was the first time, I instead took a survey of news stories reported by Google News.

Of the 100 or so top stories returned by Google, half of them involved the chess press reporting about the major online tournaments. Everyone who follows chess news knows that world class online chess is prospering during the coronavirus era, because the major tournaments -- those featuring the top players -- have been followed in depth by the major chess news sites. But what about the second tier online tournaments; how do we identify them?

The June 'Chess Yahoos' post used Mark Crowther's 'The Week in Chess' (TWIC) to identify chess events of interest and I decided to use TWIC again, this time for July. Each issue of TWIC starts with a 'Contents' section that lists the tournaments in order of their relative importance, most important first. This is according to Crowther's judgement, but since he follows the chess tournament scene as closely as anyone, his judgement is a useful guide. Each TWIC 'Contents' section starts with:-

1) Introduction

This gives Crowther's overall assessment for the current issue. Here are the next five events for each TWIC issue from the month of July:-

THE WEEK IN CHESS 1339 - 6th July 2020
2) Chessable Masters 2020
3) FIDE Chess.com Women's Speed Chess 2020
4) Grandmaster Battle 2020
5) PNWCC Masters - World Online Open 2020
6) Ceske Budejovice Chess Festival 2020

THE WEEK IN CHESS 1340 - 13th July 2020
2) 33rd Leon Chess 2020
3) PNWCC Super Invitational 2020
4) FIDE Chess.com Women's Speed Chess 2020
5) 43rd Ikaros Chess Festival 2020
6) 40th Plunge Open 2020

THE WEEK IN CHESS 1341 - 20th July 2020
2) 53rd Biel Chess Festival 2020
3) 33rd Leon Chess 2020
4) PNWCC Super Invitational 2020
5) FIDE Chess.com Women's Speed Chess 2020
6) Polish Chess Championship 2020

THE WEEK IN CHESS 1342 - 27th July 2020
2) Legends of Chess 2020
3) 53rd Biel Chess Festival 2020
4) Polish Chess Championship 2020
5) FIDE Online Olympiad 2020
6) Paul Keres Memorial 2020

For example, TWIC1339, the first issue of the month, considered that the 'Chessable Masters 2020' was the most imprtant event of the preceding week. Ditto '33rd Leon Chess 2020' for TWIC1340. These TWIC lists don't say if an event was online or over-the-board (OTB), so we have to go deeper into TWIC to find out. I know that the 'Chessable Masters' was an online event, while the TWIC introduction for 'Leon Chess' started,

The 33rd Leon Chess tournament took place online due to the coronavirus crisis.

I also know that the '53rd Biel Chess Festival' reported in TWIC1341+ was a traditional OTB tournament. What about the other events? If I find the time, I'll survey them in another post.

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Nearly three years later: For some reason that I don't understand, this post has for a long time been near the top of the list of 'Popular Posts (Last 12 months)', shown on the bottom of every post on the blog. If people are really looking for upcoming tournaments in July -- maybe chess, maybe not -- then they are likely to be disappointed when they arrive here. I added '2020' to the title to clarify the timeframe. I expect we'll see it slide down 'Popular Posts', then disappear. To be watched...