French GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave shared his idea for changing the chess tournament calendar. Maxime proposes a system similar to tennis tournaments, and notes its advantages.

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

French GM

“I’d like to offer my view, since I loved the format of WR Chess that I took part in, 16 players, 1 match per day, 4 days.

You could easily imagine creating a circuit looking like the ATP tour, with 2-3 different tournaments in a week all around the world, 16-32 players in each. And could easily envision a few grand slams lasting two weeks, with more players and some matches with 4 games in 2 days.

Every player from Top-100 and more would have more opportunities to take part in those competitions, and closer to their home, and every game played would have something big at stake.

Just my 2 cents!”

The ATP Tour is the global men’s professional tennis circuit. The tour holds multiple tennis tournaments each week across different countries. Most events have 32 players and last one week. Four Grand Slams feature 128 players over two weeks. The season concludes with an 8-player ATP Finals.

Credit: Lennart Ootes