E-sporters cry foul as online chess players reap rewards
Board mastery challenges es computer wizardry as Magnus Carlsen could soon on be the top-earning ‘gamer’
CHESS players are now earning more money online than their Fortnite and Call of Duty counterparts, prompting a row with competitive gamers who argue the game should not be classified as an e-sport.
Magnus Carlsen, the chess world champion, has earned more than $260,000 (£199,000) in prize money since hosting an online chess tournament during the pandemic.
The sum has seen the Norwegian Grandmaster leapfrog most of the world’s top e-sports earners, with the 29-year-old almost certain to be ranked number one if he overcomes American rival Hikaru Nakamura in the Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour final.
Some e-sports players can expect to make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. American video-game player and model Kat Gunn, 32 – known to her fans as Mystik – has won more than $122,000 since 2007 solely through competing in e-sports tournaments.
But, Mr Carlsen’s foray into competitive online gaming has drawn criticism from some industry experts, who claim chess is not really an e-sport.
Chester King, founder and CEO of the British E-sports Association, said chess was in a different league to the likes of Call of Duty, League of Legends and Fortnite as it is a board game streamed virtually rather than a video game in its own right. He told The Sunday
Telegraph: “You can’t say chess is an e-sport. In my mind the word virtual is more appropriate for online chess than e-sport. If you go to the core of it, chess is a board game.”
However, he stressed there were similarities between them, such as players relying on setting strategies.
“When we talk to people about e-sports sports and the positive side of it, we always ways say, ‘Look, it is a bit like modern chess ess because of the socialisation aspect t of it’. Most of the popular e-sports are also lso team sports.
“When When we speak to parents and teachers ers and we go, ‘You’re complaining that at your child is playing three hours of e-sports a night, if your child is playing ng three hours of chess would we be having the same conversation?’ and d they say ‘No’.”
Currently, tly, e-sports do not have a governing body or overarching regulator, meaning little can be done to prevent vent chess from marketing itself as an e-sport.
Online versions rsions of the board game have benefited enefited from a surge of interest during ring lockdown with thousands of viewers tuning in to matches being played on streaming platform Twitch. itch.
Nakamura, one e of the stars using the platform, has almost 500,000 followers. However, , Twitch does not classify chess as an e-sport.
Chess officials hope a growing attraction to e-sport audiences can attract younger players s to take up chess. David Llada, from the Fédération Internationale des Échecs s – the international governing body ody of chess organisations – claimed d chess should be viewed as the “father of all e-sports”.
“Chess is a sport, officially fficially recognised as such by the International Olympic Committee. It requires skill, technique, reflexes. All this is still there when you play it online. If you con consider Fifa an e-sport, definitely the same applies to chess,” he said. Mr Llada added: “Every major advance in computer science has been somehow connected to che chess: from the first supercomputers to t personal PCs, smartphones, AI. You can be sure that as soon a as we have a quantum comput computer, one of the first tasks that it will be given would be to ‘solve’ ‘ the game of chess.”
Sebast Sebastian Kuhnert, CEO of c chess24.com, said the hu huge financial rewards on offer to chess player players meant the game was now n able to compete with top online games. He added: “Millions of peop people play every day on ches chess platforms like ches chess24. Since Covid-19, elite tournaments like the Mag Magnus Carlsen tour have spru sprung up online.
“W “We have our stars and we have huge prize money at stake stake, so this is a great opportunity for onl online chess to enter the world of e-sports and compete for the attention of children ch and adults with the other big online games. The game itself is 1,500 y years old and we have recorded games going back centuries and a world championship that started in 1886. Now, that provenance is establishin lishing itself online too.”