By Julien Pretot
PARIS (Reuters) – Chess is getting ready to make its foray into Esports with teams recruiting top players ahead of this summer’s Esports World Cup, hoping to attract new audiences as the game continues to grow in spectacular fashion.
Sixteen players will compete for a $1.5 million prize pot in Riyadh from July 31-August 4 with world number one Magnus Carlsen and top streamer Hikaru Nakamura expected to be among the contenders.
French grandmaster Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, the 2021 blitz world champion, signed a one-year deal with European powerhouse Team Vitality, one of 10 Esports teams to feature at least a chess player in their roster.
“I still prefer playing over-the-board chess as I’ve started playing like this although I quickly started playing online,” Vachier-Lagrave told Reuters.
“Online chess has started to grow around 2005, 2006 with chess.com and the lockdown also played a part with more serious tournaments being taken online.
“At the beginning, I was not really into online tournaments, I did not have all my bearings, but with time it got better.”
One of the key elements with a rapid, 10-minute time control without increment, which is added time after every move, is mastering the mouse to play faster.
“To perform in a video game you need to click faster and make quick good decisions. There’s a similarity with chess and we’ve been interested (in signing a top chess player) for a while,” Nicolas Maurer, the founder of Team Vitality, told Reuters.
HUGE BUMP
Maurer was tight-lipped about how much Vachier-Lagrave would earn for his one-year deal with his team.
“It’s a competitive environment. We don’t share our players’ salaries but it’s significant. Everyone is looking to know as much as they can about their rivals and it’s also a new market,” he said, conceding Team Liquid, the top Esports team in the world, probably paid Carlsen, who signed alongside former world number two Fabiano Caruana, much more.
The same applies to French prodigy Alireza Firouzja and Nakamura, who joined the Saudi-based Team Falcons.
Vitality will take 10-30% of the player’s prize money and collect any eventual club award – the bonus paid to any team who wins an event, Maurer said.
Chess.com, the largest chess website in the world, will be the official platform for the tournament in Saudi Arabia, bringing years of experience in organising online events.
“The online events we have run in many ways, I would argue, have been the only Esports gig in town for chess for years,” Danny Rensch, Chief Chess Officer at Chess.com, told Reuters.
The popularity of the 1,500-year-old game has skyrocketed in recent years, with 711 million games played on the biggest platform in the world last month, a 726% increase from seven years ago following a huge bump during the COVID pandemic.
The EWC is also a way to keep the game’s top names on the scene, especially Carlsen, who has been turning his back to classical over-the-board chess and has been in a dispute with the international federation, FIDE.
EXCITED CARLSEN
“Magnus marches to the beat of his own drum… And he is excited, not just about freestyle chess that people have followed, but also about esports chess, about digital experiences,” Rensch said.
“Playing chess in front of fans in a live arena is something me, him, and Hikaru have always been aligned on.”
Ralf Reichert, the CEO of the EWC Foundation, said chess would fit in nicely at a global event.
“It’s a game to start with. It’s digitally played, so it’s a video game. And it’s competitive, so it’s an Esport,” Reichert told Reuters.
“The chess ecosystem is growing. And we believe while adding it and bringing it to one of the biggest sports stages in the world will nurture that ecosystem,” he added.
“Chess.com has the infrastructure. We have the history. We know what we’re doing when it comes to running high-level online esports chess events. The players have value. And now the orgs (teams) have the upside opportunity of winning pride for the Esports World Cup. And so I think from that perspective, all three parties had a chance to make it happen,” said Rensch.
The EWC will be held without the support or recognition of FIDE, which handles over-the-board events only and has been at odds with Carlsen over the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam and nobody seems to care.
“FIDE was never part of the conversation,” said Rensch, who believes the governing body has “not answered the call” of innovation.
“I think we should answer that call. That doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with classical chess, necessarily. I think both can exist. And I would say freestyle (chess) is the same thing…
“But when the best player in the game and a lot of evidence in terms of where the market is going say that something might need to be adjusted, I think there’s evidence there.”
(Reporting by Julien Pretot; Editing by Christian Radnedge)
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