8/1/2025 – The Esports World Cup began on Tuesday, 29 July. Sixteen of the world's best players competed in blitz chess (10+0) for prestige and a prize fund of $1.5 million. Alireza Firouzja and Magnus Carlsen will face each other in the final, while Hikaru Nakamura will take on Arjun Erigaisi in the match for third place. Follow the games live with commentary. | The final starts at 15.00 CEST (9.00 ET, 8.30 IST).
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Your personal chess trainer. Your toughest opponent. Your strongest ally. FRITZ 20 is more than just a chess engine – it is a training revolution for ambitious players and professionals. Whether you are taking your first steps into the world of serious chess training, or already playing at tournament level, FRITZ 20 will help you train more efficiently, intelligently and individually than ever before.
Your personal chess trainer. Your toughest opponent. Your strongest ally. FRITZ 20 is more than just a chess engine – it is a training revolution for ambitious players and professionals. Whether you are taking your first steps into the world of serious chess training, or already playing at tournament level, FRITZ 20 will help you train more efficiently, intelligently and individually than ever before.
The Esports World Cup is a tournament series for online and esports games, first held in 2022 under the name Gamers8. The tournaments take place in July and August in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This year, chess is included in the tournament programme for the first time. The partner platform is chess.com.
The Chess Esports World Cup now serves as the final tournament of the Champions Chess Tour. The prize fund amounts to USD 1.5 million, with USD 250,000 reserved for the winner. The remaining participants receive at least USD 50,000 (places 13–16).
In addition to the individual competition, the results also contribute to a team ranking across all esports disciplines.
Final and Match for third place
Live games
Chess.com live commentary
Commentary by the ChessBase India team
Format
Phase 1
4 groups of 4 players – GSL format Time control: 10 minutes, no increments Armageddon as tiebreak 2 games per match
Phase 2
Knockout stage Time control: 10 minutes, no increments Armageddon as tiebreak
Round of 8: 4 games per match Semifinals: 6 games per match Grand Final: Best of 3 sets
The first two sets consist of 4 games. If necessary, the final set consists of 2 games.
Players and teams
2025 CCT Points Qualification (11)
Alireza Firouzja [Team Falcons] Arjun Erigaisi [Gen.G Esports] Fabiano Caruana [Team Liquid] Hikaru Nakamura [Team Falcons] Ian Nepomniachtchi [Aurora Gaming] Jan-Krzysztof Duda [Twisted Minds] Magnus Carlsen [Team Liquid] Maxime Vachier-Lagrave [Team Vitality] Nodirbek Abdusattorov [Natus Vincere] Vladimir Fedoseev (unable to participate, replaced by Andrey Esipenko) Vladislav Artemiev [Team Spirit] Wei Yi [Weibo Gaming]
From the 2026 Candidates Tournament, featuring a video review by Dorian Rogozenco, to Jan Werle’s opening video on the French Tarrasch Defence, and Oliver Reeh’s tactical column ‘Top Grandmasters at Work’. Analyses by Giri, So, Wei Yi and many others.
You will learn how Black's dynamic piece activity and structural counterplay more than compensate for White's extra tempo in the colour-reversed setups.
In this course, you’ll learn how to take the initiative against the London and prevent White from comfortably playing their usual system by playing 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bf4 Nh5.
London System Powerbase 2026 is a database and contains in all 11 285 games from Mega 2026 and the Correspondence Database 2026, of which 282 are annotated.
The London System Powerbook 2026 is based on more than 410 000 games or game fragments from different opening moves and ECO codes; what they all have in common is that White plays d4 and Bf4 but does not play c4.
In this course, Grandmaster Elisabeth Pähtz presents the London System, a structured and ambitious approach based on the immediate Bf4, leading to rich and dynamic positions.
Opening videos: Open Spanish (Sipke Ernst) and Classical Sicilian (Nico Zwirs). Endgame Special by Igor Stohl: ‘Short or long side’ – where should the defending king be placed in rook endgames? ‘Lucky bag’ with 35 master analyses.
€14.90
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