Grandmasters ponder, computer brains compute, a lavish prize money beckons. And right in the middle: chess world champion Magnus Carlsen. The Norwegian organized an online tournament, it starts on Saturday. Then the champion has to compete against seven established colleagues.
Berlin (dpa) - chess world champion Magnus Carlsen now wants to conquer the globe online - as a fuel, the clever Norwegian quickly shook a super tournament in the middle of the corona crisis.
The champion has always been busy - the 29-year-old Norwegian also sees the precarious situation as a great opportunity for the royal game: "This is a historic moment for chess. It is possible to continue professional sport in an online environment."
Therefore, he emphasized, you not only have the opportunity, "but also responsibility towards the players and fans who need a distraction while abstaining from other live sports". Carlsen now followed the words with action. From April 18 to May 3, the first invitation tournament with eight of the world's best grandmasters will take place. Games with reduced thinking time are played; the prize fund is plentiful at $ 250,000.
Chess always works. With the Corona pandemic, the game on 64 fields is currently benefiting from the global period of deceleration in an unexpected way. More people than ever are fighting their boredom caused by quarantine on the Internet - and that too with chess games.
The largest portals report record access. The very popular lichess.org website is approaching the 100,000 player mark that is online at the same time. Associations and clubs organize tournaments and events for their members online, as if there was no tomorrow.
Carlsen didn't want to be inferior to anything - and is now leading the movement. "Chess is a unique sport. The moves are the same, regardless of whether they are performed on a wooden board or on a computer screen," said the number 1 in the world of chess, grandmaster since 2004 and world champion since 2013.
There is also a lot of calculation behind Carlsen's statements. His invitation tournament serves him as the perfect advertising measure for his numerous companies in which he is now involved. It all started in 2014 with the "Play Magnus" app, with which users at different levels, based on the age of Carlsen, can play against their idol. Last year, the Carlsen team expanded its conglomerate with the takeover of the profitable e-book publisher Chessable and the internet platform chess24.
The games of the tournament are now also broadcast there. So that the whole world not only watches but also listens, everything is commented in nine languages. Chinese was the last to be added: the language of the country where Corona started.
In addition to Carlsen, five players will start who were involved in the World Cup candidate tournament, which was canceled at the end of March in Yekaterinburg, Russia, after half-time. Fabiano Caruana is one of them, but the American is an outsider in rapid chess. Carlsen's strongest competitor - on paper - is the Frenchman Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who leads the candidate tournament after seven rounds. Nobody in the wide world of chess knows yet when the competition will continue.
Official website of world chess champion Magnus Carlsen
Portal lichess.org