the Global Chess League wants to become the Champions League of chess

Six competitors per team, all with the same jersey and their name written on the back. The Mumba Masters, in green, face the American Gambits, in pink, during the Global Chess League which began Thursday October 3 in London. Around twenty cameras are trained on them. Chess player Koneru Humpy doesn’t seem very comfortable: “Sometimes it has an impact because we are not used to this atmosphere. We normally play in a calm and quiet atmosphere. We only concentrate on the game and we focus on the board but here there is a lot entertainment before the game.”

Silence sets in once the clashes begin simultaneously with a time limit. Each team is a private franchise made up of an icon, one of the best players in the world, two women, two men and a young prodigy. Those who do not play the first move suffer a handicap, so for each victory they earn an extra point. Things are going badly for Koneru Humpy and his Mumba Masters. “We started very badly, we already have three defeats, we have to come back very quickly”she says.

You have to bear this pressure, Sameer Pathak is well aware of this. He runs the Global Chess League and that’s exactly what he wants: a spectacle. For the first time in the world of chess, the competition was designed first and foremost for those watching. “It’s an adaptation of what we see in other championships around the world like the NBA or English football. This is the format that we adoptedsays Sameer Pathak. There is no doubt about the popularity of chess. We saw an opportunity through YouTube, where there are millions of views for the games. Some have been viewed nearly 100 million times. So there is an audience. This is an extremely popular game with no competition designed for the public. This is what we created.”

The favorites of this second edition, the Alpine Pipers, successfully entered the competition with Magnus Carlsen in their ranks, considered by many to be the best player in the history of chess.