‘The missing piece is how it’s presented’: Behind ‘Checkmate: USA vs India’ plan to shake up the chess scene

In an exclusive interaction with Firstpost, Salim Belcadi of Checkmate Strategic Ventures explains how the upcoming ‘Checkmate: USA vs India’ event aims to reimagine chess as a global sport and bring it into the mainstream.

There have been attempts to revamp the game of chess as we know it and try and make it more popular among the younger crowd. While Standard, or Classical, chess remains the cornerstone of the board game that has had international tournaments in existence for nearly two centuries, faster formats such as rapid and blitz have been gaining popularity all over the world, which might have something to do with the ever-decreasing attention spans of the social media generation.

Newer versions such as Freestyle Chess, a.k.a. Chess960, have attempted to reinvent the board game by introducing an element of unpredictability, and the inaugural
Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour
that is currently underway is attempting to spread the format’s popularity across the globe.

Despite all the changes that chess has gone through over the years with the introduction of faster and unique formats, chess largely remains a niche sport. What drives home that fact is how chess hasn’t been able to garner enough interest for it to appear on television sets, which is where the masses still are.

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