 | |
| PMGMF | |
| Founded | October 2013 |
| Founders | Magnus Carlsen Espen Agdestein Anders Brandt |
| Fate | Acquired by Chess.com |
| Headquarters | Oslo, Norway |
Play Magnus Group is a Norwegian chess company co-founded by chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen in 2013. The company released the mobile app Play Magnus in 2014, before merging with chess24 in 2019 and being acquired by Chess.com in 2022.
In October 2013, Magnus Carlsen co-founded the Oslo-based Play Magnus AS , together with his manager Espen Agdestein and entrepreneur Anders Brandt. [1] At its founding, Carlsen owned 60% of the company and Agdestein owned 15%. Investing Carlsen's own money and that of US and Norwegian investors, [2] Play Magnus AS then began developing Play Magnus , a mobile computer chess app. The app released in 2014, and allowed users to play against a chess engine modeled after a database of thousands of positions from recorded games Carlsen played from the age of five and up. [3] [4] In November 2016, Play Magnus Group launched Magnus Trainer, a chess learning app, [5] and in 2018 launched its third mobile app, Magnus' Kingdom of Chess, a video game targeted towards young children. [6]
In 2019, Play Magnus AS merged with the chess website chess24, consolidating into the Play Magnus Group. Following the merge, the holding company of the two former chess24 owners (Jan Gustafsson and Enrique Guzman) became the largest shareholders in Play Magnus Group. [7] [8] In October 2020, Play Magnus Group was listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. The listing raised 300 million kr (US$30.2 million) for the company, giving it a valuation of 796 million kr (US$85.8 million). After the listing, Magnus Chess, an entity controlled by Carlsen and his family, owned only 9.5% of Play Magnus Group. [9]
In August 2022, Play Magnus Group accepted an offer to be acquired by Chess.com at a value of 800 million kr (US$80 million). The acquisition was officially closed on December 16, 2022. [18] [19] According to Dot Esports , the Play Magnus Group was unable to make a "sustainable profit" on anything but Chessable, and the merge left "no other realistic chess competitor" except the free, open-source Lichess. [20]
Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen is a Norwegian chess grandmaster. He is a five-time World Chess Champion, the reigning four-time World Rapid Chess Champion, the reigning six-time World Blitz Chess Champion, and the reigning Chess World Cup 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 the elite level in classical chess.
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Simen Agdestein is a Norwegian chess grandmaster, chess coach, author, and former professional footballer as a striker for the Norway national football team.
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chess24.com is an Internet chess server in English and ten other languages, established in 2014 by German grandmaster Jan Gustafsson and Enrique Guzman. Among people collaborating with chess24 are world champions, grandmasters, and international masters including Magnus Carlsen, Viswanathan Anand, Peter Svidler, Rustam Kasimdzhanov, Francisco Vallejo Pons, David Antón Guijarro, Laurent Fressinet, Dorsa Derakhshani, Lawrence Trent, Sopiko Guramishvili, and Hou Yifan.
Aryan Tari is a Norwegian chess grandmaster. Tari was Norwegian champion in 2015 and 2019 and won the World Junior Chess Championship in 2017. As of September 2023, he is the second-highest ranked player from Norway, after only former world champion Magnus Carlsen.
Espen Agdestein is the former manager of former Chess World Champion Magnus Carlsen. He is the brother of chess grandmaster and former coach of Magnus Carlsen, Simen Agdestein, and is himself a FIDE master, with a FIDE rating of 2372.
Anders Brandt, is a serial entrepreneur. He is the chairman of Idekapital AS which is owned by him and his family. Brandt is part owner and chairman of the board in Magnus Carlsen's company Play Magnus, and its angel investor and first creative director.
Kate Murphy is a co-founder and CEO of Play Magnus, a company previously majority owned by former World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen and working to take chess to more people around the world with a focus on youth. Play Magnus was acquired by Chess.com in 2022.
Torbjørn Ringdal Hansen is a Norwegian chess player.
Play Magnus is a commercial computer chess mobile app available for the iOS and Android mobile operating systems. The software is named after former World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen and features adjustable difficulty levels for chess players of various skills. It has been available since 2014 and is developed by the Norwegian company Play Magnus AS, which was co-founded by Carlsen.
Alireza Firouzja is an Iranian and 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 World Chess Championship 2021 was a chess match between the former world champion Magnus Carlsen and the challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi to determine the World Chess Champion. It was held under the auspices of FIDE and played during Expo 2020 at Dubai Exhibition Centre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, between 24 November and 12 December 2021. It was originally scheduled for the latter half of 2020 but was postponed until 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, this is the first sporting event to be held at an international exposition since the 1904 Summer Olympics during the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, United States.
Dommaraju Gukesh, better known as Gukesh D, is an Indian chess grandmaster. A chess prodigy, he is the third-youngest person in history to qualify for the title of Grandmaster, which FIDE awarded him in March 2019.
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.
Hans Moke Niemann is an American chess grandmaster and Twitch streamer. He was awarded the Grandmaster title by FIDE on January 22, 2021. In July 2021, he won the World Open chess tournament in Philadelphia. He first entered the Top 100 Junior players list at position 88 on March 1, 2019. As of September 2023, he is the eighth-highest-rated Junior in the world.
During the Sinquefield Cup in September 2022, a controversy arose involving 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 garnered significant attention in the news media worldwide.