BUDAPEST: OVER the last few days, Budapest has been front and centre in the minds of the wider chess community. It’s not every day that an established game goes about creating a new World Championship; it’s why being in Budapest has been like being given a ringside seat to the inner machinations of an organisation trying to reinvent the wheel.
Anyway, chess already has World Championships catering to different stakeholders: the World Championship, the women’s World Championship and the World Rapid and Blitz (and the women's equivalent) are the conventional ones (not counting the freestyle World Championships).
From next year, the 'ultimate mind game' will welcome another World Championship. The Total Chess World Championship. You can argue the need for another world title in a game already overflowing with multiple official titles. But you can also see why Kjell Madland, the Norwegian who has created this new title, chanced upon this in the first place.
This title tries to unify the game's three most traditional time controls — Classical, Rapid and Blitz — into one title. When the pilot edition of Total Chess goes into the second week, players will play each other in all three formats in a single day. Consider the prospect of Magnus Carlsen or Fabiano Caruana facing each other across three formats within six hours.
Will you not be entertained? This will be a slightly flawed analogy, but think about India and Australia facing each other in an ODI, a T20I, as well as a one-innings shootout in their whites inside a single day. Will you not be entertained?
Precisely.
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In 2026, entertainment is one of the biggest currencies. You can have the greatest product, but if it's not entertaining, is it even a product in the first place? This is the starting point for considering the new World Championship that chess will have from 2027. "This is in all sports and business," Madland says. "You need to develop. If not, you will be out (of business) after a few years. I think that's very important."
This much is clear even within the world of chess. Even 25 years ago, the world of elite chess had several prestigious events where players wanted to be invited to. But because all of these were Classical events and because some of these events were so married to tradition, they lost out. TV demanded a certain product, and with fans becoming younger, those events slowly lost out.
Madland, who's acutely aware of this, knows innovation has to keep happening to be relevant. "We have a plan to get this (product) on TV, OTT and other channels and also on social media," Madland says. "The new generations... follow this in another way when compared to fans (from an earlier generation). I think it's very important to have faster formats in Classical because Classical is very big and interesting. But it's not necessary that everyone has to do it. What we are thinking is if we should have this on TV, TV needs to plan the schedule. Of course (right now), it's very difficult for them to plan if a game is going to be 2.5 hours long or 6.5 hours long (a typical length of a normal time control game can be anywhere from three hours to six hours). What should I do if the game ends after three hours? It's not easy... the other way also; if they don't have enough time, they miss the end of the game. This is what we think is important, but it doesn't mean that everyone has to change."
Madland has lived by this mantra. Norway Chess, one of the most prestigious Classical events on the calendar, already has multiple things in its arsenal that other events don't do. Their confessional booths are a big hit. Seeing players give their unbridled hot takes during a game has won them a lot of followers. Imagine hearing an Erling Haaland talk about an opposition defender or a Jasprit Bumrah give fans an insight into why he bowled a yorker. That's exactly what Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura have done at Norway Chess. Earlier this year, Divya Deshmukh went viral because, in one of her confessionals, she said she wanted to eat a packet of dried mango but she didn't know if she could. It was made for Insta reels. Something Madland considered when his team and he started the confessional booths.
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In simple terms, Madland and his team at Norway Chess already had a great and unique product at their disposal. Because it was generally the only Classical event Carlsen was featuring in, a lot of players wanted to play in it. That's even before taking into consideration the equal prize money for the women's event as well as the Armageddon games to ensure fans — both on streams as well as the ones who had paid to watch games in situ — had something extra to look forward to (all draws are settled by Armageddon).
So why was Madland prepared to take this risk? "Even in Norway Chess, we have changed the concept, developed it, and everything," he says. "If you don't do it, that's the biggest risk."
He is also of the opinion that they will be able to break even 'soon'. It's where India could play a big role. They have already held talks with a few Indian companies and do not be surprised if an Indian city plays host to this new World Championship sooner rather than later.
The pilot edition, then, will inform a lot. When 2027 comes around, it will be time for the real thing. 24 players, four cities, millions, a new World Championship, TV deals, and trying to market a product the way it has never been marketed before.
Strap on your seatbelts.