It’s never been so lucrative to be the best in the world at nontraditional chess. Amid a chess resurgence that started when that fictional redhead hallucinated pieces on the ceiling, pro tournaments are adapting to our TikTok-ified attention spans—and rewarding the players who can keep up.

Chess joins one of the world’s biggest video-game tourneys. Grand masters are about to rub shoulders with gamers at the Esports World Cup (EWC) in Saudi Arabia, where World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen already got a fist-bump from Post Malone during the opening ceremony. Chess is debuting at EWC later this month:

• Sixteen players will compete for a $1.5 million prize pool, a sum that’s become par for the course in international pro chess, which historically hasn’t minted many millionaires.
• The games won’t be normal—players will only have 10 minutes each to make their moves, which will likely lead to more time-crunched blunders.

This will make the matches feel “a bit more gamified,” Fabiano Caruana, the world No. 5 chess player, told CNN. The cup’s organizers decided on the high-speed format to appeal to the esports crowd and to the new generation of chess fans that will be in the audience, as many young aficionados discovered the game on livestream platforms like Twitch.

The world’s most attended chess cup is evolving, too. A record 3,000+ players registered to play in the annual Grenke Chess Festival this year, where freestyle chess—a format that randomizes your starting positions—replaced one of the tournament’s classic events for the first time.

That checkmate cha-ching: The FIDE World Chess Championship offers the biggest wheel of cheese, with $2.5 million in winnings doled out last year. With chess cups upping their prize pools, some grand masters can finally afford to live lavishly—34-year-old world No. 1 Carlsen, who’s known for his quick moves, has made more than $10 million in lifetime tournament prizes, and emerging star Gukesh Dommaraju made more than $1.5 million last year alone, according to Chess.com.—ML

One of the hottest video games right now is a digital version of the 11th-century board game.

Chess.com, the no-frills online chess site—born out of a fortuitous domain purchase in 2005—boomed during Covid and has continued to grow in more recent years.

• Chess.com reports that its daily active user count reached 8.2 million last month, up from 3.7 million in 2022 and 1.1 million in 2019.
• The company is generating at least $100 million annually by selling ads and premium subscriptions that offer unlimited gameplay and post-game analysis.

It’s also where pro athletes hang out

Chess.com is the only place where you can unknowingly checkmate Liverpool FC star Mohamed Salah, Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray, or a number of other star athletes, who are among the site’s most avid users.

The company’s Chief Chess Officer, Daniel Rensch, told Morning Brew he thinks athletes are drawn to the game of kings because it mirrors their day jobs: “It’s critical thinking, it’s strategic, it’s challenging them to think several moves ahead.”

Sports stars widen the appeal beyond chess nerds. These heavy-hitters often play anonymously, but Chess.com isn’t above leveraging its celebrity players. Besides streaming tournaments with chess celebs like Magnus Carlsen, Chess.com hosts the PogChamps amateur tournament series for big-name pro athletes and popular content creators who are also Chess.com users. This year, it featured Premier League soccer player Eberechi Eze, Olympic gymnast Stephen Nedoroscik, and Fortnite streamer Mongraal.—SK

Chess has been an important testing ground for artificial intelligence, and AI has been smoking humans at chess as far back as when PCs were white boxes. Chess engines like Deep Blue—which famously shocked the world when it beat then-world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997—as well as AlphaZero and Stockfish, have been rated above top human athletes for years.

Pros use these engines to train for high-stakes matches, but only recently has the tech begun upending the game for amateurs:

• Chess.com recently added an AI opponent that can automatically adjust the level of game difficulty, provide live feedback, and coach players on their strategy.
• AI is also forcing chess sites to invest in complex algorithms to detect whether players are getting next-move tips from a bot that could have Magnus Carlsen losing his rooks and queen.

But the generative AI bots you use to write emails and Python code won’t help you hold your own against a grand master. Carlsen recently said he beat ChatGPT in 53 moves without losing a single piece, reflecting the widespread observation that large language models, unlike specialized chess engines, are mediocre players (at least so far).

The bots haven’t taken human chess players’ jobs. Possibly providing a glimpse into the future that’s in store for other cultural activities that AI might one day master, human chess is flourishing with interest in the ancient game at an all-time high.—SK

India’s southeastern coastal city of Chennai has a long history of trade, from the Silk Road to the British East India Company. But nowadays, it’s gaining recognition for a new export: chess prodigies.

Pawn stars: Chennai has spawned both of India’s world champions: five-time winner Viswanathan Anand and the current top dog, Gukesh Dommaraju, who became the youngest world champion ever last year at 18.

Chennai and the state it’s located in, Tamil Nadu, are responsible for more than one-third of India’s 85 chess grand masters, punching way above their weight population-wise.

How did Chennai end up with more chess wizards than Hollywood has Skarsgårds? A lot of its success traces back to 1995, when Anand won India its first world championship, inspiring a new generation to take up the game. Chess clubs started popping up around the city, and children began playing the game at increasingly younger ages.

Now it’s a full-blown prodigy pipeline, according to NPR:

• Schools allow promising players to skip class so they can practice and travel to matches.
• Local businesses help pay travel expenses.
• As in other parts of India, parents in Chennai are generally supportive, because chess can create career opportunities later in life. For example, Indian officials often give desirable public-sector jobs to high-ranking chess players.

Chennai is embracing its chess-ness. Champions get treated like kings and queens, and Al Jazeera reported that when the city hosted the 2022 Chess Olympiad, it painted its iconic bridge to look like a chessboard.—BC

It’s good to be king. And in chess, that’s Magnus Carlsen.

Before his 14th birthday, the Norwegian had already become a chess grand master and played legend Garry Kasparov to a draw. More than 20 years later, Carlsen is a five-time world champion and firmly in the GOAT conversation.

And he’s spun that prowess on the board into entrepreneurship and international fame.

Down to business

Carlsen has leveraged his chess skill into multiple businesses. In 2013, the year he became a world champion, he founded Play Magnus, a company that started with an app that let users learn from his play. After years of growth, Chess.com acquired the company in 2022 for $82.9 million.

And after dominating classical chess, Carlsen is looking to rearrange the board, literally. Carlsen and a partner raised millions of dollars for a new tournament series, Freestyle Chess Grand Slam, which plays a version of the game that randomizes the back row to speed up the action and make the games more unpredictable.

Another Carlsen startup, called Take Take Take, aims to become the “go-to platform for viewing chess” by pairing live events with commentary, real-time data, and emoji to entice casual fans.

Cheating and blue jeans

If the emoji don’t draw you into chess, how about the drama? Despite his focus on actual business, Carlsen is no stranger to the attention economy:

• In 2022, Carlsen abruptly withdrew from a tournament and implied another competitor was cheating. The player admitted to cheating in the past, but denied Carlsen’s specific allegations and filed a defamation suit. That suit was dismissed in 2023.
• Last year, Carlsen was fined $200 for wearing jeans at a tournament—a violation of the competition’s dress code. He later sold the infamous pants on eBay, raising $36,100 for charity.
• Earlier this year, Carlsen went viral for slamming his fist on the table in frustration after losing a match to reigning world champ Gukesh Dommaraju.

Bottom line: Master the checkmate, and the checks will come.—BC