Chess
Chess Super League: All you need to know
With the chess fever in India growing stronger than ever, the sport’s streaming pioneers in India – Raina and Shah, have partnered with Nodwin Gaming to host the Chess Super League.
Chess, in India, has been on a rise ever since the covid-19 pandemic struck last year. With a majority of the population stuck inside their homes for a major part of the year due to various kinds of lockdown and no other sporting activities possible, people took to chess.
This coupled with the chess streaming scene led by comedian Samay Raina and International Master (IM) Sagar Shah and the release of Netflix's Queen's Gambit – a web series based on chess further increased the popularity of the strategy-based game in India.
With the chess fever in India growing stronger than ever, the sport's streaming pioneers in India – Raina and Shah, have partnered with Nodwin Gaming to host the Chess Super League (CSL) – a one of its kind online chess league.
With the Chess Super League expected to kickstart today, here is all you need to know about the league
How many teams will there be in Chess Super League?
The Chess Super League will be contested by a total of six teams:
- The Kingslayers
- Brutal Bishops
- Krazy Knights
- Pivotal Pawns
- Quintessential Queens
- Ruthless Rooks
Who are the owners of these six teams?
The following are the owners of the six teams in the Chess Super League:
Teams | Owners |
The Kingslayers | Tanmay Bhat |
Brutal Bishops | Kalamkaar |
Krazy Knights | Biswa Kalyan Rath and Shreyas |
Pivotal Pawns | Zakir Khan |
Quintessential Queens | Saina Nehwal and Suhani Shah |
Ruthless Rooks | S8ul |
How do the teams line up?
Each team is formed by a total of 6 players, including two juniors and two international players. Here is how the team's line up for the Chess Super League:
The Kingslayers
Anish Giri, Arpita Mukherjee, Dommaraju Gukesh, Nana Dzagnidze, Soumya Swaminathan and SP Sethuraman
Brutal Bishops
Alexandra Kosteniuk, Eesha Karavade, Raunak Sadhwani, Tarini Goyal, Vidit Gujarathi and Wang Hao
Krazy Knights
Aryan Chopra, Hikaru Nakamura, Krishnan Sasikiran, Maria Muzychuk, Mary Ann Gomes and Mrudul Dehankar
Pivotal Pawns
Abhijeet Gupta, Arjun Kalyan, Bhakti Kulkarni, Ding Liren, Savitha Shri and Zhansaya Abdumalik
Ruthless Rooks
Anna Muzychuk, Harika Dronavalli, Harshit Raja, Karthikeyan Murali, Saina Salonika and Teimour Radjabov
Quintessential Queens
Hou Yifan, Koneru Humpy, P Iniyan, Priyanka K, Sergey Karjakin and Rania Sachdev
When will the Chess Super League start?
The Chess Super League will start on 11th October 2021 and will run until 17th October 2021.
What is the format of the Chess Super League?
The Chess Super League will be played in a round-robin format with a time control of 15 minutes + 10 seconds increment per move.
After the round-robin ends, the bottom two teams in the points table will bid goodbye to the tournament while the top four will advance to the playoffs.
The top two teams after the round-robin stage will play Qualifier 1 – the winner of which will go into the final and the loser will have one more shot at reaching there in Qualifier 2.
On the other hand, the third and fourth-placed team will play an Eliminator with the losing team exiting the event and the winning team moving into Qualifier 2 against the loser of Qualifier 1.
At what time will the games be held?
The games will be held from 8 pm IST to 11 pm IST daily.