This weekend: FIDE World Corporate Championship

Carlsen, Giri and Nepomniachtchi to participate

The FIDE World Corporate Championship will take place online on February 19-21. It will be a team tournament in which companies will present a roster made up of employees and at the most one invited player — each team can only have one 2500+ rated player in its lineup. In addition, the teams must have at least one male player and at least one female player.

As stated by FIDE, “with 284 teams registered from 78 different countries, the event will bring together 1,467 players. This turnout widely surpassed all our estimations, and we would like to thank our partners at Chess.com and the Chief Arbiter, Alex Holowczak, for the extra effort they are making to accommodate all the participants”. 

Not only is the field incredibly large but also surprisingly strong, as no fewer than 36 grandmasters have registered to participate. Most notably, Magnus Carlsen, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Anish Giri, Vladislav Artemiev and Radoslaw Wojtaszek will be playing.

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Anish Giri giving a blindfold simul at Optiver’s office in Amsterdam

The list of companies is also impressive, as it includes the likes of Amazon, Samsung, Ford, Microsoft, Gazprom, Facebook, Siemens, Dell Technologies, Bosch, Airbus, IBM, Boeing, Sony, Intel, ArcelorMittal, Equinor, HP, Twitter, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Vodafone, Sberbank, American Express, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Oracle, Credit Suisse and Airbnb.

Some top executives from these companies have been included — Bernhard Spalt, CEO of Erste Group Bank, and Tomislav Topic, who is now the CEO of Telconet, a telecom company in Ecuador, will participate.

Notwithstanding, the strongest executive is the two-time French Champion and former elite grandmaster Joel Lautier, a Member of the Supervisory Board of Sovcombank, who will make a temporary comeback to play in the championship. 

No entry fee, donations welcome

There was no entry fee of any kind for this competition. However, FIDE is organizing a fund-raiser in cooperation with the platform Softgiving, and participant companies are encouraged to donate towards one of three social projects currently being developed by FIDE: Chess in Education programs for underprivileged children, Chess for people with Disabilities, and the FIDE veterans support program. If you also want to contribute, you can do it through this link.

All donations received through this link will count towards the leaderboard offered by Softgiving. The most generous donors will appear on top of the leaderboard (donation amounts won't be revealed).

At the end of the event, the team that has donated the most funds for those charity causes will be invited to the FIDE World Championship Match 2021, taking place at Dubai World Expo in late 2021, with accommodation expenses covered for three nights and VIP tickets to attend three rounds of the match.

Top players

Top teams

Find more info at Chess-Results

Links

• Official site
• Full lists of teams at Chess-Results