The competition began Thursday in London and will last nine days. The world's best are here for an event that aims above all to satisfy the public.
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(New window) which started on Thursday, October 3 in London. About twenty cameras are trained on them. Chess player Koneru Humpy does not 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 focus on the chessboard but here there is a lot of animation before the game."
Silence falls once the clashes begin simultaneously with a time limit. Each team is a private franchise composed 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 from a handicap, so for each victory, they earn an additional 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.
There is no doubt about the popularity of chess.
Sameer Pathak is well aware of this pressure. He runs the Global Chess League and that is exactly what he wants: a spectacle. For the first time in the world of chess, the competition has been designed primarily for those watching. "It is an adaptation of what we see in other championships in the world like the NBA or English football. This is the format that we have adopted," says Sameer Pathak. "There is no doubt about the popularity of chess. We saw an opportunity thanks to YouTube, where there are millions of views for the games. Some have been viewed nearly 100 million times. So there is an audience. Here is an extremely popular game without a competition designed for the audience. This is what we have created."
The favourites of this second edition, the Alpine Pipers, have made a perfect start to the competition with Magnus Carlsen, considered by many to be the best player in the history of chess, among their ranks.