This is a historic debut! With this step competitive chess will be featured for the very first time in the Esports World Cup (EWC), the world’s largest gaming and esports festival.
The event will take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from 31thJul to 3rdAug 2025 and the world’s top chess players will be competing for a massive $1.5mio. prize pool.
This is quite a deal for the chess world as the game will be showcased to a new generation of esports enthusiasts and a huge audience who most likely so far had not much exposure to chess. Specifically, the chess GOAT Magnus Carlsen will join the Esports World Cup as an ambassador and help connect chess with the broader esports community!
The top 12 players of the first 2 2025 Champions Chess Tour events in Feb. and March (plus 4 others) will compete at the EWC.
There is a noteworthy change in the time format. At least in the "Chessable Masters" which is played right now, the time format is 10+0, so no increment at all, which already led to crazy time scrambles. Time scrambles we had also in the past, but with 0 seconds increment it gets to new levels and we saw missed mate in 1s even by super grandmasters.
Not sure if this is good for chess. What do you think? Is chess sacrificing too much to gain attraction for the esports masses?
Here are by the way the current standings of the Chessable Masters", Magnus, Arjun, Hikaru and Alireza made it to the Semifinals:
https://www.chess.com/news/view/2025-cct-chessable-masters-playoffs-day-1
