Chess: Magnus Carlsen claims first Esports World Cup title
World number one Carlsen claimed the $250,000 top prize and saw his Team Liquid sneak ahead in the overall championship after his win over Firouzja.
The prize pool of the tournament was $1.5 million. "It's been an amazing show, unlike anything I've ever seen," Carlsen said just before lifting the trophy on stage, with pyrotechnics lighting up behind him. The inclusion of the centuries-old board game in the esports tournament comes after it experienced a significant revival during the pandemic.
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First Post
2 hours ago
- First Post
Chennai Grand Masters 2025: Full schedule, participants, prize money and everything else you need to know
The third edition of the Chennai Grand Masters, India's strongest Classical tournament, gets underway in Chennai on Wednesday, 6 August and features some of the biggest names in the sport including Grandmasters Arjun Erigaisi and Anish Giri. read more World No 5 Arjun Erigaisi and No 10 Anish Giri are the top contenders for the title at the 2025 Chennai Grand Masters. Image: Norway Chess/FIDE After his impressive performance at the Esports World Cup in Riyadh last month, where he represented Gen.G and had gone as far as the semi-finals, Arjun Erigaisi is set to compete on home turf in the third edition of the Chennai Grand Masters tournament, India's strongest Classical tournament. However, the 21-year-old Indian Grandmaster, who had also reached the semi-finals of the Freestyle Chess Las Vegas event before chess' debut at the Esports World Cup, is set for quite the challenge even if he can count on the support of the crowd to boost his morale. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The world No 5, after all, is part of a 10-man field that comprises names such as Anish Giri and Vincent Keymer besides fellow Indians Vidit Gujrathi and Nihal Sarin. Arjun thus faces quite the steep path to the summit even if he enters the tournament as a title favourite. Gukesh had won the inaugural edition in 2023, beating Arjun on the Sonneborn-Berger score after both players finished with 4.5 points each at the end of seven rounds. Arjun was also involved in a three-way tie with Aravindh Chithambaram and Levon Aronian on 4.5 points after seven rounds. Aravindh would go on to win the tie-breaks to be crowned champion. Having fallen narrowly short twice before, Arjun will be hoping to emerge triumphant on his third attempt. With the third edition of the tournament set to get underway on Wednesday, 6 August, we present to you the full schedule, format, list of players and everything else you need to know about the tournament: When will the third edition of Chennai Grand Masters be taking place? Chennai Grand Masters 2025 will be taking place from 6 to 15 August. Play will begin at 2 pm IST everday except on the final day, in which it will begin a couple of hours earlier. Where will the third edition of Chennai Grand Masters be taking place? The 2025 Chennai Grand Masters will be taking place at the Hyatt Regency in Chennai. ♟️ Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters LIVE in Chennai! The Board is Set. The Legends are Ready. Are you? 🎟️ Book now on Kynhood or just hit the link in bio! 📍 Hyatt Regency, Chennai | 🗓️ August 6–15, 2025@ChessbaseIndia @chess24com @chesscom_in@QBResearch @kyn_hood… — Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters (@Chennai_GM) July 30, 2025 STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Who are the players competing in the Masters event at Chennai Grand Masters 2025? Following are the players who will be participating in the 'Masters' section: – GM Arjun Erigaisi (India) – GM Anish Giri (Netherlands) – GM Vincent Keymer (Germany) – GM Vidit Gujrathi (India) – GM Jorden van Foreest (Netherlands) – GM Awonder Liang (USA) – GM Nihal Sarin (India) – GM Ray Robson (USA) – GM Murali Karthikeyan (India) – GM Pranav Venkatesh (India) What format will the games be played in in Chennai Grand Masters 2025? The tournament will take place in a single round-robin format with Classical time controls – in which players start with 90 minutes on the clock with an increment of 30 seconds per move. Should two or more players finish tied for the first spot after nine rounds, the winner will be decided in the tie-breaks which will comprise two blitz games with 3+2 time controls followed by an Armageddon game, if necessary. How much prize money is on offer at Chennai Grand Masters 2025? Here's the total prize money (in Indian rupees) that's will be awarded to the players competing in the Masters section, as per final standings: 1st: Rs 25 lakh 2nd: Rs 15 lakh 3rd: Rs 10 lakh 4th: Rs 7.5 lakh 5th: Rs 5 lakh 6th: Rs 3.5 lakh 7th: Rs 3 lakh 8th: Rs 2.4 lakh 9th: Rs 1.8 lakh 10th: Rs 1.8 lakh Besides the trophy and prize money, the tournament also offers crucial FIDE Circuit points that count towards qualification for next year's Candidates Tournament. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Where can I watch Chennai Grand Masters 2025 LIVE? The 2025 Chennai Grand Masters will be streamed live on YouTube by the ChessBase India channel.
Indian Express
15 hours ago
- Indian Express
Which is the smartest AI model? A chess tournament might hold the answer
Starting from Tuesday, a unique chess tournament might offer the answer to the question on everyone's mind: which is the smartest artificial intelligence (AI) model. The chess tournament, to be played over three days on Kaggle Game Arena, in partnership with Google DeepMind. The tournament will also have world no 2 chess player Hikaru Nakamura doing livestreams of the action on his Twitch channel with his insights while world no 1 Magnus Carlsen will do an event-ending recap for the Take Take Take app. Popular chess streamer Levy Rozman (known popularly as Gotham Chess) will also be doing daily recaps and analysis videos on his YouTube channel. The event will feature eight of the world's leading AI models: Gemini 2.5 Pro (Google), Gemini 2.5 Flash (Google), o3 (OpenAI), o4-mini (OpenAI), Claude 4 Opus (Anthropic), Grok 4 (xAI), DeepSeek R1 and Kimi k2 (Moonshot AI). Elon Musk, who is the man behind Grok, was slammed by chess players last year for his opinion about chess. 'Computers are so much better than humans at chess, it's absurd. I predict that chess will be essentially fully solved (like checkers) within 10 years,' he had posted on X in May last year. He had also spoken in an interview about playing chess for his school chess team. 'I was on the school chess team. But I find that chess is a simple game frankly. I mean you only have 64 squares. I was pretty good at chess as a kid. I won every game.' Responding to Musk's comments about never losing at chess and it being a simple sport, Nakamura had said: 'Anybody who says they had never lost at chess, you know something (fishy) is going on! Back in the 90s machine vs human and machine vs machine chess tournaments (such as the Top Chess Engine Championship or Computer Chess Championship) used to be quote popular. But after the machines grew too strong, the events ran out of steam and were discontinued. The event will be help with help from popular streaming platform and Google DeepMind, which gave the world the chess-playing computer program AlphaZero in 2017. AlphaZero is a neural network that became really strong in the sport by playing millions of games against itself for four hours. In fact, AlphaZero was able to outperform Stockfish 8, which was back then one of the strongest chess programs, just four hours after being fed the rules of chess and being told to learn by playing simulations against itself. When AlphaZero and Stockfish played a 100-game match, AlphaZero won or drew all of the games.
News18
2 days ago
- News18
R Praggnanandhaa Fumbles Twice When Asked To Spell His Name, Video Breaks Internet
Last Updated: In a video going viral on the internet, 19-year-old Indian GM Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa can be seen fumbling twice when asked to spell his name. Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, a 19-year-old chess player from India, fumbled twice when asked to spell his name during the recently concluded chess event at the E-sports World Cup in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In a hilarious video going viral on the internet, Praggnanandhaa was asked to tell the spelling of his name, and while replying, he said, 'P A R, Sorry, P R A G G, and then you add Anand's to it, so… Uh, no, you add N first and then Anand and then H D A A at the end. P R A G G N A N A N D H A A." Here's a look: Dawg how are you gonna get your own name wrong @rpraggnachess 💙 😭The last two weeks of Chess at #EsportsWorldCup were extra special because of our superfans who came out in droves to support us💙 — Team Liquid (@TeamLiquid) August 3, 2025 Carlsen wins World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen of Norway won the inaugural online chess competition at the Esports World Cup. The 34-year-old Norwegian defeated No. 8 Alireza Firouzja to clinch the title. The final match of the event was held as best of three sets, with two four-game sets potentially followed by one two-game decider. Instead Carlsen wrapped things up 2-0 by winning 3-1 twice. 'It's been an amazing show, unlike anything that I've seen so far," said Carlsen after lifting the gold-plated EWC trophy. 'I really hope that this is a big part of the future for chess. 'Maybe we can get on a bigger stage next time," he added as it had proved popular at the tournament. GM Hikaru Nakamura overcame GM Arjun Erigaisi 3.5-2.5 to take third place in a thrilling match. Praggnanandhaa defeated Carlsen in Vegas Praggnanandhaa posted a win over Norwegian World No.1 Carlsen in the classification games for third place at the Las Vegas Freestyle Chess event in July. Pragg got the better of Carlsen in the classification games for the quarterfinal spot as well. Pragg, who was on white pieces in the classification games for third place, pushed Carlsen to the extent of resigning the game at the end of 43 moves to pick up his second win over the Norwegian in three days at the event in the USA. view comments Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
