2020 in chess explained

The 2020 chess calendar was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but major events that took place included the Tata Steel Chess Tournament, won by Fabiano Caruana, and Norway Chess, won by Magnus Carlsen. The Candidates began in March, but, due to the pandemic, was postponed at the half-way stage with Ian Nepomniachtchi and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave leading.

2020 tournaments

This is a list of significant 2020 chess tournaments:

Supertournaments

Tournament	System	Dates	Players (2700+)	Winner	Runner-up	Third
Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2020	Round robin	10–26 Jan	14 (11)			Wesley So
Tata Steel Challengers 2020	Round robin	10–26 Jan	14 (0)			Pavel Eljanov
Prague Chess Festival 2020	Round robin	12–21 Feb	10 (6)			Jan-Krzysztof Duda
Biel Chess Festival 2020	Round-robin	18–29 Jul	8 (4)			Michael Adams
Norway Chess 2020	Round robin	5–16 Oct	6 (5)			Levon Aronian
Russian Championship Superfinal 2020	Round robin	6–14 Dec	11 (6)			Vladimir Fedoseev

Open events

Tournament	System	Dates	Winner	Runner-up	Third
Gibraltar Chess Festival 2020	Swiss	21–30 Jan			Andrey Esipenko Daniil Yuffa
Aeroflot Open 2020	Swiss	19–27 Feb			Rauf Mamedov

Deaths

• 28 February — Gennady Kuzmin^[1]
• 5 March — Stanislav Bogdanovich^[2]
• 20 April — Arsen Yegiazarian^[3]
• 22 August — Miron Sher^[4]
• 24 August — Wolfgang Uhlmann^[5]
• 4 September — Dmitry Svetushkin^[6]
• 1 November — Markus Stangl^[7]
• 17 December — Krzysztof Bulski^[8]

Notes and References

1. Web site: Gennady Kuzmin, 1946-2020. Yury. Solomatin (Marignon). Chess.com.
2. Web site: Станислав Богданович и его девушка найдены мёртвыми | chess-news.ru. chess-news.ru. 6 March 2020. 7 March 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200307080254/http://chess-news.ru/node/26837. dead.
3. Web site: Մահացել է գրոսմայստեր Արսեն Եղիազարյանը . 2021-02-13 . www.1lurer.am . hy.
4. Web site: Hartmann . John . 2020-08-21 . GM Miron Sher (1952-2020) . 2021-02-13 . US Chess.org . en.
5. Web site: McClain . Dylan Loeb . 2020-09-01 . Wolfgang Uhlmann, East Germany's Top Chess Player, Dies at 85 . 2021-02-13 . The New York Times . en-US.
6. Web site: 2020-09-11 . GM Dmitry Svetushkin (1980-2020) . 2021-02-13 . Chess News . en.
7. Web site: 2020-11-02 . GM Markus Stangl verstorben . 2021-02-13 . Schach Nachrichten . de.
8. Web site: PZSzach - Polski Związek Szachowy . 2021-02-13 . pl-PL.