Chess clubs are closed, almost all tournaments are canceled, but the interest in the mental sport is greater than it has been for a long time. The main focus is on Russia and world champion Magnus Carlsen. And one thing is clear: online chess continues to boom.
Berlin (dpa) – Thanks to Netflix and the Internet, chess has experienced a boom like never before in 2020, and this year will also be exciting. Russia, of all places, should become even more important in 2021 – despite the CAS ruling to exclude the sporting nation until 2022.
Online chess is an absolute hit: the platform “Chess.com” announced its fifty millionth member by Christmas. And at least one hundred million people have watched the Queen’s Gambit, which has been streamed on Netflix for two months.
A group of companies was created around world champion Magnus Carlsen, which went to the Oslo Stock Exchange in October and is currently worth 110 million euros. Your product: online chess in all its facets. This includes a Champions Chess Tour initiated by the Norwegian Carlsen himself for 1.5 million dollars in prize money. It is not only broadcast on chess channels, but also on Eurosport.
However, new factors come into play in online chess. Some games are decided by an unfortunate movement of the computer mouse or because the Internet connection is lost. In retrospect, some losers were declared winners because an algorithm in the opposing game detected a suspicious number of matches with computer trains.
In the final of the international Pro Chess League, Tigran Petrosyan, who twice won the Chess Olympiad with Armenia, is said to have cheated. Last week, the former U20 world champion Parham Maghsoodloo from Iran was caught on the Lichess platform.
When all international sporting events had already been canceled in mid-March, the World Cup Candidates’ tournament started in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Not only did it hit the headlines for the brain teaser, it got the attention of bookmakers as well. Suddenly almost all of them were offering chess bets.
After half of the rounds, the determination of Carlsen’s next World Championship challenger was interrupted. It was officially justified with the discontinuation of scheduled air traffic. Only: A chess tournament that received worldwide attention no longer suited the Russian government’s Covid-19 strategy, which was switched from “everything under control” to lockdown.
Even before the judgment of the International Court of Justice Cas against Russia, the world chess federation Fide was a sports-political bastion of the Kremlin. It is headed by Arkady Dvorkovich – Deputy Prime Minister of Russia until 2018. Eighty percent of the Fide sponsors come from this country.
The 2022 Chess Olympiad was held in the Belarusian capital Minsk. Because of the economic crisis, the ruler Alexander Lukashenko wanted to get rid of the event in June. Now the national competition is to take place in Moscow.
Russia will also step in at the men’s and women’s World Cups, prize money and the number of participants will be increased. The Russians are spending at least three million euros on the little-noticed World Cups. The game is to be played in Sochi in July 2021.
In the coming spring, the candidates’ tournament in Ekaterinburg should be brought to an end. Dvorkovich does not rule out that some individuals, especially the Chinese Ding Liren and Wang Hao, continue to play online under the supervision of an arbitrator. If the world exhibition in Dubai and with it the World Cup planned there for November bursts, Russia must not step into the breach: According to Cas judgment, world championships are only allowed there again from 2023.
dpa-infocom, dpa: 210106-99-915376 / 2
Homepage World Federation Fide
Homepage of world champion Carlsen “Play Magnus”
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