While Fabiano Caruana, R Praggnanandhaa and several other leading players have written an open letter to the organisers of the Esports World Cup and the Grand Chess Tour, urging them to resolve their scheduling conflict, world No 2 Hikaru Nakamura has gone on a completely different track.
Fabiano Caruana and R Praggnanandhaa are among seven leading players who have complained against the scheduling conflict between the Esports World Cup and the Grand Chess Tour, who have major events lined up in the month of August.
Caruana and ‘Pragg’ had signed an open letter along with Levon Aronian, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Vincent Keymer, Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Alireza Firouzja urging the EWC as well as the GCT to arrive at a compromise and rearrange their dates to ensure that the world’s best players get to compete in both events instead of being forced to choose between the two.
Hikaru disagrees with open letter to EWC and GCT organisers
World No 2 Hikaru Nakamura, however, disagrees with Caruana, Praggnanandhaa and the other chess stars contributing to the open letter. According to the American Grandmaster, the scheduling conflict between the Esports World Cup – in which chess makes a second appearance after a successful debut last year – and the Grand Chess Tour is a “good thing” for chess.
“I think this conflict — is actually a good thing. The reason is, I’m going to be honest, I think that every single player who signed this letter — they aren’t going to bring any more viewership or any more interest to events,” Nakamura was quoted by RookReview as saying.
“For example, if players will play in St. Louis, I don’t think that’s going to affect EWC, because Magnus will play, I will play, Alireza as well — and vice versa.”
‘I don’t want to call it a cartel or something’
Nakamura, who will be headlining the Esports World Cup in Riyadh along with world No 1 and defending champion Magnus Carlsen, added that having more tournaments in the calendar would mean more opportunities to players who normally don’t get invited to leading tournaments.
“Additionally, I think that one of the big problems I see with chess currently is that there are a handful of tournaments. I don’t want to call it a cartel or something — but essentially the same Top-15 players receive invitations to all events. And the players between Top-15 and Top-25 are not substantially worse than most the players in the Top-10…
“I think having this conflict is actually going to be a good thing. Because it’s going to provide more opportunities for players across the board. We’re not going to be in a situation where you have 10 players just hogging up all the invites and getting all the money,” the 38-year-old added.
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‘If Magnus was playing Grand Chess Tour’: Caruana sheds light on GCT vs Esports World Cup conflict
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Last Chance Qualifier for the Esports World Cup takes place from 6 to 8 August, with the main event then taking place from the 11th to the 15th of that month.
The 11th season of the Grand Chess Tour, meanwhile includes the Saint Louis Rapid and Blitz (2 to 6 August) and the Sinquefield Cup (10-20 August) taking place around the same time, both events taking place in St Louis, USA.
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