Type of site | Internet chess server |
---|---|
Available in | |
Dissolved | January 31, 2024 |
Owner |
|
URL | chess24 |
Registration | Yes |
Launched | 2014 |
Current status | Defunct |
chess24.com was an Internet chess server in English and ten other languages, established in 2014 [1] by German grandmaster Jan Gustafsson and Enrique Guzman. [2] [3] Chess24 also provided live coverage of major international chess tournaments, and hosted their own online tournaments, including the Magnus Carlsen Invitational.
In March 2019, chess24 merged with Magnus Carlsen's company Play Magnus AS in a transaction that made the former chess24 owners the largest shareholders in Play Magnus. [3] [4] In 2022, Play Magnus was purchased by Chess.com, which made Chess.com the owner of chess24.
In December 2023, the chess24 team announced that they will be closing their site and apps by the end of January 2024. [5] The website officially closed down on January 31, 2024, and its address began redirecting to the Chess.com news page.
A 2020 review by IM Luis Torres put chess24 as one of the three most popular internet chess servers, alongside Chess.com and Lichess. Similarly to other chess servers, Chess24 offered the ability to play online against other users or bots, enter online tournaments hosted on the site and view your own statistics. Torres ranked Chess.com the best overall, but Chess24 as the best for improving one's game. [6]
There was also an option of paying for premium membership on Chess24. [7] Going premium allowed deeper Stockfish analysis and also participation in events such as Banter Blitz, which allowed Premium members to play with collaborators of Chess24. Reviews tended to favour rivals Chess.com and Lichess in terms of the playing experience, while suggesting that Chess24 had richer educational video content, and probably a better interface for tournament monitoring. [8] [6]
Chess24 provided live coverage of major international tournaments on the website and also on YouTube with commentary by players such as Yasser Seirawan, Peter Leko, and Tania Sachdev. [9] [10] They also hosted and sponsored their own events, especially after their acquisition by Play Magnus AS. From September 2019 to April 2020, Chess24 held the first international Banter Blitz Cup, an online Blitz Chess tournament featuring players such as Magnus Carlsen, Gata Kamsky, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, Parham Maghsoodloo, David Antón Guijarro and Leinier Domínguez with a $50,000 prize pool for players and $5,000 for streamers. [11] It was won by Alireza Firouzja in the final against Magnus Carlsen. [12] [13]
From April to May 2020, with face-to-face tournament play impossible because of Covid-19 travel bans and lockdowns, Chess24 held the Magnus Carlsen Invitational, an online Rapid Chess tournament which was won by Magnus Carlsen. This was expanded to form a conceptual tour including the Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge, and culminating in a Grand Final, featuring Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura. [14] [15] The 2021 edition was hosted in March 2021, also online, and saw the favourite Magnus Carlsen being knocked out in the semifinal by Ian Nepomniachtchi, who eventually lost in the final to Dutch Grandmaster and World Championship Candidate Anish Giri.
Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen is a Norwegian chess grandmaster. Carlsen is a five-time World Chess Champion, the reigning five-time World Rapid Chess Champion and the reigning seven-time World Blitz Chess Champion. He has held the No. 1 position in the FIDE world chess rankings since 1 July 2011 and trails only Garry Kasparov in time spent as the highest-rated player in the world. His peak rating of 2882 is the highest in history. He also holds the record for the longest unbeaten streak at an elite level in classical chess at 125 games.
Christopher Hikaru Nakamura is an American chess grandmaster, streamer, YouTuber, five-time U.S. Chess Champion, and the reigning World Fischer Random Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he earned his grandmaster title at the age of 15, the youngest American at the time to do so. With a peak rating of 2816, Nakamura is the tenth-highest-rated player in history.
Wesley Barbossa So is a Filipino and American chess grandmaster, a three-time U.S. Chess Champion, and the first World Fischer Random Chess Champion. He is also a three-time Philippine Chess Champion. On the March 2017 FIDE rating list, he was ranked number two in the world and had an Elo rating of 2822, making him the fifth-highest-rated player in history.
Fabiano Luigi Caruana is an Italian and American chess grandmaster who is the reigning four-time United States Chess Champion. With a peak rating of 2844, Caruana is the third-highest-rated player in history.
Vladimir Vasilyevich Fedoseev is a Russian chess grandmaster playing for Slovenia. He competed in the Chess World Cup in 2015, 2017, 2021 and 2023.
The Sinquefield Cup is an annual, closed chess tournament hosted by the Saint Louis Chess Club in St. Louis, Missouri, United States.
Lichess is a free and open-source Internet chess server run by a non-profit organization of the same name. Users of the site can play online chess anonymously and optionally register an account to play rated games. Lichess is ad-free and all the features are available for free, as the site is funded by donations from patrons. Features include chess puzzles, computer analysis, tournaments and chess variants.
Nodirbek Abdusattorov is an Uzbek chess grandmaster. A chess prodigy, he qualified for the grandmaster title at the age of 13 years, 1 month, and 11 days. FIDE awarded him the title in April 2018. He is Uzbekistan's highest-rated grandmaster and currently one of the best chess players in the world.
Andrey Evgenyevich Esipenko is a Russian chess grandmaster. He won the European U10 Chess Championship in 2012, and both the European U16 and World U16 Chess Championship in 2017.
Alireza Firouzja is an Iranian-French chess grandmaster. Firouzja is the youngest player to have surpassed a FIDE rating of 2800, beating the previous record set by Magnus Carlsen by more than five months.
The FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship 2019 (WFRCC) was the first world championship in Fischer random chess officially recognized by the international chess federation FIDE. Previous unofficial championships had been held, with the most recent winner being Magnus Carlsen in 2018. The competition started on April 28, 2019, with the first qualifying tournaments, which took place online and were open to all interested participants; and continued with further rounds up to the quarter-finals, which were also online. The semi-finals and final were played over the board between October 27 to November 2, 2019, in the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Bærum, Norway. The winner of the final was Wesley So, defeating Magnus Carlsen 13.5–2.5, to become the first FIDE world champion in Fischer random chess. Over the course of the competition, various time controls were applied, with longer games being weighted more heavily.
The Magnus Carlsen Invitational 2020 was an online chess tournament that ran from 18 April to 3 May 2020 as the first round of the Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour.
The Champions Chess Tour 2021, known for sponsorship reasons as the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, was a 10-month long series of 10 online chess tournaments featuring the world's top players, playing for a prize money pool of US$1.5 million. The tournament games are held on chess24.com and are broadcast on Twitch, YouTube, chess24.com itself, and the tour's official website. The tour started on November 22, 2020, and lasted until October 4, 2021. The tournaments were not rated by FIDE.
Online chess is chess that is played over the Internet, allowing players to play against each other in real time. This is done through the use of Internet chess servers, which often include a system to pair up individual players based on their rating using an Elo or similar chess rating system. Online chess has existed since the 1970s, but has seen a rapid growth in popularity amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and rise of chess livestreaming.
Hans Moke Niemann is an American chess grandmaster and Twitch streamer. He first entered the top 100 junior players list on March 1, 2019, and became a FIDE grandmaster on January 22, 2021. In July 2021, he won the World Open chess tournament in Philadelphia. He had a peak global ranking of No. 16 in September 2024.
The 2022 Candidates Tournament was an eight-player chess tournament to decide the challenger for the World Chess Championship 2023. The tournament took place at the Palacio de Santoña in Madrid, Spain, from June 16 to July 5, 2022, with the World Championship finishing in April 2023. As with every Candidates tournament since 2013, it was a double round-robin tournament.
During the Sinquefield Cup in September 2022, a controversy arose involving the chess grandmasters Magnus Carlsen, then world champion, and Hans Niemann. Carlsen, after surprisingly losing in their third-round matchup, dropped out of the tournament. Many interpreted his withdrawal as Carlsen tacitly accusing Niemann of having cheated. In their next tournament meetup, an online tournament, Carlsen abruptly resigned after one move, perplexing observers again. It became the most serious scandal about cheating allegations in chess in years, and it garnered significant attention in the news media worldwide.
The 2024 Candidates Tournament was an eight-player chess tournament, held to determine the challenger for the World Chess Championship 2024. The tournament took place at The Great Hall in Toronto, Canada, from April 3–22, 2024. The event was held alongside the Women's Candidates Tournament. The event was won by Gukesh Dommaraju, which made him the youngest ever winner of a Candidates Tournament, and the youngest ever World Chess Championship challenger. Following the Event Gukesh went on to become the youngest World Champion by defeating Ding Liren in the 14th round of Classical Chess.
Alisher Suleymenov is a Kazakh chess player who received the Grandmaster (GM) title in 2023. He had an upset victory over Magnus Carlsen in the second round game of the 2023 Qatar Masters.
The Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge was an 8-player over-the-board classical Fischer random chess tournament that took place at Gut Weißenhaus in Wangels, Germany from February 9–16, 2024. It was the first major Fischer random chess tournament that used classical chess time controls.
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