World Chess, a global gaming company, will from now on plant a tree for each chess set sold. Beautiful chess sets and beautiful forests can co-exist.

World Chess Championship set

This environment-conscious initiative is a collaboration with One Tree Planted, a nonprofit dedicated to global reforestation. The main goal is to plant 10,000 trees over the next 5 years, restoring deforested and fire-affected areas. For every chess set purchased, World Chess will plant one tree in India where its main manufacturing site is located.

“We will plant a tree and help restore forests for every wooden chess set sold by World Chess and its partners around the world. It’s important to us, and it’s important to our customers. We will also continue using sustainable materials since It has always been important for World Chess to be sustainable and to use wood that is already harvested by the Indian government for their use. In other cases, the trees are sometimes so old that they have to be cut down and replanted, ‘ said the CEO of World Chess Ilya Merenzon.

According to the globalforestwatch.org research, India lost 376kha of tree cover from 2001 to 2021, equivalent to a 3.7% decrease in forestation since 2000, and 204Mt of CO₂e emissions. The objectives of this partnership include supporting India’s reforestation efforts, empowering our partners and customers to act sustainably, and raising awareness of the importance of ecosystem rehabilitation.

Planting trees is one of the best ways to combat the damaging impacts of climate change. Trees clean our air and water, create habitat for biodiversity, contribute to our health and well-being, and create jobs for social impact.

The World Chess x One Tree Planted partnership is designed to simplify customer participation in global reforestation. For every chess set sold at the World Chess Shop, the company will make a donation to One Tree Planted equivalent to the cost of planting one tree. The trees will be planted by local partner organizations and community volunteers in areas where deforestation has occurred. World Chess will also monitor the effort and will keep its partners and customers informed.

FIDE Online Arena, the official gaming platform of the International Chess Federation, advances personal health in e-sport by introducing a new feature to measure calories burned by playing online.

Starting from today, FIDE Online Arena, the official FIDE gaming platform, which is operated by World Chess, will track and display the calories users burn during an online game of chess. Whilst calorie tracking is already widely used across offline fitness and sports, including chess, it has not previously been used as a feature in e-sports.

FIDE Online Arena is hoping that calorie tracking in e-sports will spread and there will be increasing encouragement for healthier lifestyle decisions. After each online chess game, which can last anywhere from 30 seconds to 45 minutes, an estimated number of calories burned during the game will appear alongside the game results. Players will also be able to track cumulative calories burned over a week, month, or even a year. During an average 5-minute game, an online player will typically burn only 4 calories, but with online players often playing many games the cumulative total can build rapidly.

This is thought to be the first time in online sports that athletes and casual players alike can access their calorie expenditure insights and trends using an integrated calorie calculator. The FIDE Online Arena has developed a unique and innovative tracking module that takes into account multiple key indicators including but not limited to, the player’s weight, height, and age (if known) as well as the speed of play, time, game intensity and the difficulty of each game.

Whilst this is a first for e-sport, in 2019, ESPN released surprising data relating to in-person chess. The published data concluded that chess players can use up to 6,000 calories a day during an in-person tournament, three times more than an average person consumes in an entire day. The study took into account research on calorie consumption and calories burnt by physical exertion and heightened mental activity.

Ilya Merenzon, CEO of World Chess, commented: “Supporting good health, both physical and mental, is hugely important, especially in modern societies which face the challenge of increasingly sedentary lifestyles. Therefore we are excited that FIDE Online Arena is using the latest technology and understanding of physiology to promote physical health for chess players around the world.

‘The research findings about the calories burned during chess reinforce the status of  chess as a physical as well as an intellectual challenge, a global sport that is good for your mind and also your body.’

Chess prodigy Arjun Erigaisi is making history as he signs a groundbreaking sponsorship deal with Singapore-based Quantbox.

Photo: Lennart Ootes/Tata Steel Chess India

This five-year contract, worth over $1.5 million, marks the first-ever sponsorship of the Grandmaster from Telangana, and could be a major boost to his professional career. For Erigaisi, 2022 has been a breakthrough year as he has consistently improved his game, earning him a strong rank of 26th in the world by classical score. This sponsorship is the biggest of its kind in the history of Indian chess.

The International Chess Federation recently released the requirements for the 2024 Candidates’ Tournament.

Photo: World Chess (Candidates Tournament 2018 in Berlin)

“The main innovation is creating a new qualification path through different FIDE-rated tournaments. Tournaments that meet certain criteria, like being played under standard time control, supervised by International Arbiters, and where Fair Play measures are applied (among other criteria listed below in detail), will grant points towards the ‘FIDE Circuit’. The player with more points at the end of 2023 will get the coveted spot in the most prestigious of all chess tournaments.”

The competition will feature:

• The loser of the FIDE World Championship Match (Ian Nepomniachtchi or Ding Liren);
• The three top players from the World Cup 2023;
• The two best players by FIDE Grand Swiss Tournament standings;
• The top-performing player in FIDE tournaments in 2023 who has not yet been chosen;
• The highest-ranked player in the Classic in January 2024 who has not already been selected.

After Arjun Erigaisi signed a $1.5 Million Sponsorship Deal with Quantbox, another Indian prodigy, GM Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa signs with Baseline Ventures for Commercial Representation.

Photo: Lennart Ootes

The past years, India has seen a great rise of young talents in chess including Arjun Erigaisi, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, Nihal Sarin, and Dommaraju Gukesh. Indeed, a bit more than 10 days ago Arjun Erigaisi made history as he signed a $1.5 Million sponsorship deal with Singapore-based Quantbox to mark the beginning of a major boost to his professional career.

Today Baseline Ventures announced that they signed Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa to represent him in all commercial aspects. Pragg is the fourth-youngest Grandmaster in the history of chess with remarkable performances including wins against Magnus Carlsen.

The MD & Co-founder of Baseline Ventures, Tuhin Mishra, welcomed Praggnanandhaa, saying that “ Praggnanandhaa’s accomplishments as a 17-year-old are just the beginning. He is undoubtedly an exceptional talent with the potential to become a sporting sensation who can take the country by storm.”

“I am thrilled to have signed with Baseline Ventures and am looking forward to how it will benefit my career. It is imperative that every athlete today has the right representation, and having the right people around me to handle the commercial aspects would be positive for my career” said Praggnanandhaa.

Most people can’t even imagine how much money elite chess players earn – only from tournament prizes let alone streaming and other business activities – per year but Nathaniel Green published an article on chesscom revealing that 3 GMs made more than 500k in 2022, and 17 GMs between $100-450k with only one woman on this list.

Photo: World Chess

It’s not hard to imagine that No.1 on this list is Magnus Carlsen. The winner of the Champions Chess Tour, Norway Chess, and both the World Rapid and Blitz Championships earned nearly $560k in major tournament prizes throughout 2022. With a $100 million libel lawsuit on his back by Hans Niemann, and after withdrawing from the World Championship title with a $2M prize fund though, Magnus might find himself in an uncomfortable financial position.

Second on the list and very close to Magnus is Wesley So who brought in just over $540,000 worth of prize money in 2022 after getting the first prize at Chesscom Global Championship worth of $200,000.

Third but for sure not least is the professional streamer and superstar Hikaru Nakamura, who ended the year with a bit more than $515k. Six months ago though El Pais has published an article claiming that Nakamura is the world’s wealthiest chess player with a an estimated fortune somewhere around $50 million!

Moving lower on the list there are 17 more GMs who earned more than 100k, with GM Tan Zhongyi being the only woman, and 17-year-old Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu being the youngest on the list. Check them out:

Ian Nepomniachtchi – $429,512
Alireza Firouzja – $358,542
Jan-Krzysztof Duda – $296,178
Fabiano Caruana – $263,810
Levon Aronian – $260,136
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave – $234,904
Anish Giri – $213,061
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov – $201,834
Ding Liren – $175,540
Richard Rapport – $166,938
Le Quang Liem – $134,500
Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu – $129,000
Nihal Sarin – $118,802
Dmitry Andreikin – $112,861
Vladimir Fedoseev - $109,405
Leinier Dominguez – $109,391
Tan Zhongyi – $103,753

Read the original article here

World Chess Plc, a leading chess organisation seeking to promote the mass market appeal of chess globally through the commercial offering of chess related activities, is pleased to announce its intention to seek admission of its Ordinary Shares to the Official List and to trading on the London Stock Exchange’s Main Market for listed securities, and a placing of new shares to raise up to £10m.

It is expected that the Admission will become effective and that dealings will commence in November 2022, under the ticker CHSS. Novum Securities Limited (“Novum”) is acting as Financial Adviser to the Company and Retail investors will be able to register their interest in the IPO by applying through PrimaryBid prior to Admission.

Ilya Merenzon, Chief Executive Officer of World Chess, said: “I am pleased to be announcing our intention to float on the London market at a transformational time for chess and for our business. There continues to be an explosion of interest in chess, which has accelerated through recent years and even more during the pandemic. To keep pace with this growth we are scaling up our operations and expanding our range of services internationally. We are hugely passionate about chess and can’t wait to take the next step in developing the sport that looks like a hybrid of e-sports with a Nobel prize awards ceremony.”

The Times News

Magnus Carlsen, the current World Chess Champion, stunned fans earlier this week by announcing that he will not be defending his title in the next match and will effectively retire from the Championship cycle (but not from chess).

Photo: World Chess

YouGov, the leading research company and FIDE Online Arena, the official gaming platform of the International Chess Federation, conducted a survey in the US and the UK to determine how many people know the name of the World Champion and which country he is from. The survey results were surprising, only 7 percent of people asked in the UK (9 percent in the US) could correctly pick the name of the World Champion out of 10 options. 4 percent of all respondents incorrectly said that the title is still held by Garry Kasparov, who retired from competitive chess in 2005, whilst 77 percent indicated that they don’t know the current World Champion’s name.

Results were similar when asked where the Champion is from, with 6 percent of the respondents correctly indicating that the Champion is from Norway, while 15 percent erroneously believe that the current Champion hails from Russia, and 5 percent believe that the Champion is from the United States (the last American World Chess Champion was Bobby Fischer in 1972).

The survey also offered remarkable insight into chess demographics; 14 percent of young adults (18 to 24 year old) correctly named the World Chess Champion versus 4 percent among the older respondents (55+). According to these findings, chess is seemingly more popular among younger demographics both in the US and the UK.

The inaugural report, the first official Chess Awareness Barometer, will be released annually to measure awareness and popularity of the elite chess players and the World Chess Champion.

Check out now!

FIDE, ISF (the International School Sport Federation) and World Chess are proud to announce the FIDE – ISF World School Teams Online Chess Cup 2023, taking place in March 2023. This exciting event provides a platform for schools from FIDE and ISF member countries, as well as students from around the world*, to connect with chess enthusiasts from across the globe and showcase their skills in an official international chess tournament.

With chess in schools becoming increasingly important, organizers of the FIDE – ISF World School Teams Online Chess Cup 2023 are eager to support this initiative to integrate chess into the school educational system.

“Chess is a unique game – both extremely sportive and educational. We are excited to organize the Online Schools Chess Championship together with ISF. It is a great event that we hope will create a competitive mood, but also motivate the school leaders to engage their students in further training and learning,” says FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich.

The tournament will feature two age categories, U15 and U18, with an expected 200 teams from around the world participating. Each school team must consist of 4 to 7 full-time students from the same school.

Winners and medalists will be rewarded with exclusive team training sessions with world-famous grandmasters, chessboards signed by the GMs, subscriptions for the World Chess Masterclasses program, and FIDE Online Arena premium membership packages.

The tournament will be held online on the FIDE Online Arena, with the final stage broadcast live on World Chess and FIDE’s YouTube channels.

The program of the FIDE – ISF World School Championship Online Chess Cup 2023:
18 March 2023: Qualification tournament 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 – Teams 

19 March 2023: Qualification tournament 2005, 2006 and 2007 – Teams 

25 March 2023: Final tournament 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 – Teams 

26 March 2023: Final tournament 2005, 2006 and 2007 – Teams

The tournament registration will begin on February 09 and be open until March 11, 2023 at isf.fide.com



* Except schools from Russia and Belarus.

The event is expected to be one of the most televised chess events in the world

The Armageddon Championship Series 2023, a revolutionary chess format developed specifically for television by World Chess plc, will take place in Berlin, Germany from March to September 2023, filmed in a bespoke pavilion located on Unter Den Linden. The series begins with the Americas’ Championship Series from March 6 – 12, followed by the Asia and Oceania, Women’s Week, and Europe and Africa series, ending with the exhilarating series Grand Finale streamed on international television between September 14 – 20.

World Chess, the company famous for chess innovation, developed the Armageddon Championship Series to become the Formula 1 of chess — a season of high-intensity ultra-fast chess tournaments, groundbreaking broadcast, and international TV distribution, featuring the likes of Wesley So (USA), Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France), Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Uzbekistan), Sam Shankland (USA), Jan-Krzysztof Duda (Poland), Vidit Gujrathi (India), Richard Rapport (Romania), Vincent Keymer (Germany), Gukesh D (India), and other world-famous chess players. These participants will battle under immense time pressure for a total prize fund of the Series of €460 000, with a heartbeat and for the first time ever, calorie-burned data points shown on screen alongside the moves and the feed live from the studio.

The Armageddon Championship Series 2023 starts on March 6 and is expected to be one of the most thrilling and widely-watched chess series of the year. It will be broadcast live and feature highlights on over 30 online and TV platforms globally, including CNBC, Channel 4, beIN, and Fox Australia, among others. Over 220 million households are anticipated to watch the show.

Ilya Merenzon, CEO of World Chess, commented: “Armageddon is the Formula 1 of intellectual sports, and with millions of people watching chess, innovation like the Armageddon tournament marks chess becoming a truly global mass spectator sport.”

“From the comfort of their own home, fans can get their hearts racing watching some of the greatest chess players of all time play a rapid-fire game, before refueling and going again. All whilst chess increasingly becomes a staple of the sports broadcasting ecosystem.”

Dates:
Armageddon Championship Series: Americas — March 6-12
Armageddon Championship Series: Asia & Oceania — April 3-9
Armageddon Championship Series: Women’s week — May 8 – 14
Armageddon Championship Series: Europe & Africa — June 12-18
Armageddon Championship Series: Grand Finale — September 14-20

Official website