Russian chess players will meet Armageddon like Asians

World Chess, a leader in chess innovation, has launched a commercial series adapted in a format unlike any other for television broadcasts. The Armageddon Championship Series will be the first competition in which Russian chess players Daniil Dubov and 14th world champion Vladimir Kramnik will compete as representatives of an Asian rather than a European region.

World Chess, which was previously responsible for a significant part of the championship cycle in chess, has launched a new major project – Armageddon Championship Series. This is a commercial series of offline tournaments with a total prize pool of €420,000. It stands out primarily for its format.

Ilya Merenzon, head of World Chess, who has repeatedly applied various innovations related to the system of chess competitions and the features of their display, explaining to Kommersant its essence, called the series “the first attempt to bring chess to the global television screen.”

Merenzon recalled that one of the main shortcomings of this sport for decades has been the low interest in it from television companies, due to the peculiarities of chess – the unpredictability of games in terms of their duration, as well as the “high barrier of understanding” of a complex game with classical time control for ordinary spectators. According to the head of World Chess, the format of the Armageddon Championship Series, the live broadcast of which pilot competition with the participation of American players (it opened on March 6) is being conducted in 13 countries, including the US and the UK, can solve problems. The company claims that CNBC, beIN, Fox Australia and other major channels are going to demonstrate the parties of the project.

The structure of the series, for the competitions within which a special pavilion in Berlin is equipped, is crowned with the September Grand Final. It will include players selected based on the results of the four tournaments preceding the final – three regional (for zones that unite North America with South, Europe with Africa and Asia with Oceania), as well as women’s. Eight chess players will compete for two tickets to the final from each, playing short games in blitz (time control is three minutes per game with the addition of two seconds per move) according to the so-called double elimination scheme, which is used this season in the football Fonbet Cup of Russia: it gives the loser in the next play-off round a chance to correct the mistake. The rounds themselves consist of two games, with the addition of “Armageddon” in the event of a draw – this is a duel with ultra-tight time control in which Black is considered the winner, even after making a draw. Such regulation ensures a practically fixed time of a micromatch — no more than 80 minutes.

World Chess has managed to sign contracts for participation in the Armageddon Championship Series with a number of chess stars. These are, for example, such elite grandmasters as the American Wesley So, the Pole Jan-Krzysztof Duda, the Frenchman Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, the Romanian Richard Rapport and the brightest young, under the age of 20, talents of modern chess – the Uzbek Nodirbek Abdusattorov and the Indian Gukesh Dommaraju.

From Russia, two grandmasters will play in the Armageddon Championship Series. These are Daniil Dubov, one of the most spectacular and extraordinary young players in the world, and the 14th world champion Vladimir Kramnik.

The 47-year-old Kramnik formally ended his career back in 2019, but, having abandoned top competitions with classical time control, he sometimes accepts invitations to tournaments with other time controls. Ilya Merenzon is confident that the outstanding grandmaster is still “extremely strong in fast formats” and will be able to compete with opponents from previous generations.

An interesting fact: both Russian chess players will play in the next tournament of the series. It will take place in April and will bring together players from the Asia and Oceania zone. Thus, it is Kramnik and Dubov who will become the first domestic grandmasters who play chess as representatives of not the European, but the Asian region. The Chess Federation of Russia (RCF) has just changed its geographical location. At the end of February, the Asian Chess Federation (ACF) overwhelmingly approved the decision to join the CFR, which came under the auspices of the European Chess Union (ECU) amid sanctions imposed on it in connection with a special military operation in Ukraine. True, World Chess says that they have assigned chess players, including Vladimir Kramnik and Daniil Dubov, to regional tournaments in advance, even before the ACF vote, based on “logic and convenience.”

Alexey Dospekhov