Carlsen, Giri & Nepo play FIDE World Corporate Championship

World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen tops the line-up for the 1st Online FIDE World Corporate Chess Championship, in which he’ll play for his team Kindred. Ian Nepomniachtchi (SBER), Anish Giri (Optiver), Vladislav Artemiev (Aeroflot) and Radek Wojtaszek (WASKO) are the other 2700+ players in action, though a 4-player team can only feature one player rated over 2500. Major companies such as Microsoft, Google, Airbus and Amazon have multiple teams in the event, with almost 300 teams in total.

Magnus Carlsen represents Kindred, the parent company of his sponsors Unibet

The FIDE World Corporate Chess Championship is taking place online on Chess.com from 19-21 February. The first two days feature 8 sections where teams play a 6-round Swiss tournament at a 10-minute + 2-second increment time control. The top team from each group then goes forward to play an 8-team knockout tournament on Sunday.

The regulations state that in each 4-player team:

• Only one player can be invited (i.e. the rest must work for the company)
• Only one player can be rated over 2500
• Each team must have at least one female and male player

The consequences of that are that it’s unlikely we’re going to see most of the top players on the third day of the event. For instance, Magnus Carlsen’s team Kindred, the parent company of his sponsor Unibet, doesn’t have the same fire power on the other boards.

They’re ranked 12th in the East D Group with only the top team qualifying. Magnus commented:

This tournament will be a fun break from my own daily tournaments and I look forward to represent Kindred Group in the games toward some of the biggest companies and brands in the world. There are many teams competing and for me the level of competence in some of them is surprisingly high. I am impressed by the enthusiasm the team of Unibet and Kindred shows when it comes to chess and I know that they have many competent hobby players within their organization.

Magnus could come up against Anton Korobov, who plays alongside three more titled players for favourites Sberbank Trade Union, while Vladislav Artemiev plays in the same group for Aeroflot, but his team is ranked only 17th.

In the C Group Anish Giri’s Optiver are ranked 6th, while Radek Wojtaszek’s WASKO are 3rd, but Ian Nepomniachtchi, meanwhile, is favourite to qualify for the knockout with SBER, who are also the top seeds for the whole event.

Second are Grenke Bank, who are boosted by having German no. 5 Georg Meier working for them, while they could also invite 2494-rated Alina Kashlinskaya. The Top 10 seeds are as follows:

The action in the Eastern section starts at 16:00 CET while the two Western groups start at 02:30 CET on Saturday morning. We hope to be able to show all the games live here on chess24. Here, for instance, is the D Group featuring Magnus Carlsen:

You can follow all the groups at these links: East A, East B, East C, East D, East E, East F, West A, West B

See also:

• Official website
• All the games on chess24: East A, East B, East C, East D, East E, East F, West A, West B