spot_img
spot_imgspot_imgspot_imgspot_img

Chess Super League organized by NODWIN Gaming, ChessBase India and Samay Raina concludes

Published on:

NODWIN Gaming, South Asia’s leading esports company, in partnership with title sponsor CoinDCX conducted the week-long online league which saw participation from elite men and women grandmasters, international masters, and top junior boys and girls, from India and across the world.

The week-long online league saw participation from elite men and women grandmasters, international masters, and top junior boys and girls, from India and across the world. The league concluded on October 17, 2021, by awarding its top teams a whopping prize pool of INR 40 lacs and garnered a viewership of 10 Million.

In the 30+ hour-long league, a total of 120+ rounds of chess were played. Each team was spearheaded by their owners – top professionals in their respective fields – including Tanmay Bhat (The Kingslayers), Biswa Kalyan Rath and Shreyas Shrinivasan (Krazy Knights), S8UL (Ruthless Rooks), Raftaar – Kalaamkaa (Brutal Bishops), Zakir Khan from Pivotal Pawns and Suhani Shah with Saina Nehwal from Quintessential Queens. The Pivotal Pawns (Abhijeet Gupta, Arjun Kalyan, Bhakti Kulkarni, Ding Liren, Savitha Shri, Zhansaya Abdumalik) and The Kingslayers (Anish Giri, Arpita Mukherjee, D Gukesh, Nana Dzagnidze, Soumya Swaminathan, S. P. Sethuraman) engaged viewers in an edge-of-the-seat finale that had the audience on tenterhooks before the Pivotal Pawns emerged winners after a tie-breaking armageddon game.

ALSO READTeam India CS:GO and Tekken7 star Hitesh Khorwal seal spot at 13th Esports World Championship Global Finals

“The success of the Chess Super League (CSL) — our foray into the world of online chess, has reiterated our belief that various forms of gaming can come under the umbrella of gaming and esports entertainment. Chess is a fantastic game that teaches you strategy, deep thinking, patience, and in the CSL format teamwork. It will do our country good if, through tournaments like the Chess Super League, we can get more of India’s youth interested in this phenomenal game. Apart from the players themselves, the team owners along with the storytellers and Samay and Sagar did a splendid job in keeping up the fun and the serious element of the league is a great balance. We look forward to season 2 of CSL very soon!” said Akshat Rathee, Managing Director, NODWIN Gaming.

Sagar Shah, CEO and Co-founder ChessBase India added “Powering Chess in India is the vision of ChessBase India. I am glad that with the Chess Super League we were able to do just that. The immense benefit was received by Indian chess players as they got to compete with world-class players. The juniors got a chance to interact with top players of the world which gives them new insights into the game. I am overwhelmed with the love and support for the league from all the players, community, and audience members. It’s been wonderful working with Samay Raina and NODWIN Gaming and we hope to make this league bigger and better in the years to come.”

ALSO READ: Sportradar is ICC’s data and betting partner for next 8 marquee tournaments

Samay Raina added “It’s difficult to believe that after only 18 months of starting to stream chess, I have been able to be a part of something this huge and exciting – with top players playing in our league. The whole league has been an emotional roller-coaster and we can’t wait to be back with the next edition. I want to especially thank the fans who have been incredibly supportive throughout this journey.”

The Chess Super League streamed live on Samay’s Youtube channel with lots of surround content including team anthems, highlights, and analysis hosted on the ChessBase India channel and channels of the team owners. Overall, content from the Chess Super League has been watched over 10 million times in just a week.

The League was sponsored by CoinDCX (India’s safest crypto exchange) and supported by Red Bull, Mama Earth, Rage Fan NFT, and Exploring Infinities founded by the man who holds the title for being ‘The Fastest Human Calculator’ — Neelakantha Bhanu.

“We are very excited to enter into the world of gaming and esports through our association with NODWIN Gaming. We are seeing increasing associations across the globe in the emerging and exciting areas of cryptocurrency and esports and look forward to several more collaborations where we get to associate ourselves with new experiential games and trends,” said Ramalingam Subramanian, Head of Brand, Marketing and Communications, CoinDCX.

Related