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Magnus Carlsen has a vision to transform the ancient game of chess. The Grandmaster, who is a candidate for the greatest player of all time, is confident that the improved version, complete with a heart rate monitor and a “confession” booth, will win over enthusiasts as well as new fans, saying it has “huge untapped potential”. He claimed that there was.
The Norwegian, the world’s highest-rated chess player, has partnered with German technology investor Jan Buettner and New York-based Left Lane Capital to create a league inspired by sports such as Formula 1 motor racing. I launched it.
He and other competitors on the Grand Slam Tour of Freestyle Chess have developed a version that randomizes the starting positions of kings, queens, bishops, knights, and rooks in order to prioritize creativity and intelligence over memorized flow of play. You will be competing in the game.
“We essentially believe this is a better game than what we’ve been playing in classical chess,” Carlsen told the Financial Times. “Many people involved in the game find it very exciting that every game has a new map.”
Heart rate monitors reveal the stress levels players are enduring, and confessional booth-style interviews follow a format similar to those used on reality TV shows.
The tournament, which began in February at Buettner’s German residence and then moved to Paris, New York, Delhi and Cape Town, is a play for the global online chess audience that has boomed since the pandemic. Chess’ popularity increased with the success of the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit, which was released in 2020 and tells the story of a fictional female genius.
Left Lane, which has invested $12 million, is an example of investors looking to bring new business models and competition formats to sports in search of profit.
“Magnus clearly has the GOAT, and that’s what attracts the best players in the world,” said Left Lane Managing Partner Harley Miller. “When you have the best players in the world, you can think about the distribution and the audience from the beginning.”
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Miller acknowledged that while the league won’t be able to make “an immediate profit,” the goal is to increase revenue from sponsorships, ticket sales, entertainment and hosting fees.
To achieve this, Freestyle Chess seeks to reimagine the board game as a “media event” along the lines of an F1 race or a professional basketball game, with the idea of building a season-long narrative that fans can follow. It is said that there is. The presentation was shared with the FT.
Increasing the player’s profile is key to that ambition. “What makes F1 so exciting is the background, the color codes of the drivers, the backstories and the personal stories of these people,” Buettner said.
Buettner said Freestyle Chess is prioritizing audience reach and won’t put it behind a paywall for now, but a media rights deal could follow “if we get enough distribution.” . Chess.com is currently the largest distributor, he added. Prize money for each of the first three events is $750,000, increasing to $1 million thereafter.
Carlsen is the most high-profile athlete in the sport, so his support is important. He held the title for 10 years until he withdrew from this year’s Classic World Championships, organized by governing body Fide, and vacated it in 2023 in anger at the format.
But he was in Singapore to promote freestyle chess before 18-year-old Indian Gukesh Donmaraju won the world title. Donmaraju will be joining the new league.
“That’s definitely something we want to lean into, to make it more than just a game,” Carlsen said, citing the tournament’s sponsors’ goal of “turning chess players into race car drivers.” said.
First, he added: “We need to make great products so we can build a culture around everything.”
