The Chess Super League: The Chess Super League organized by NODWIN Gaming, ChessBase India, and Samay Raina concludes with a bang; Zakir Khan’s Pivotal Pawns bags a lion’s share of the INR 40 lakh prize pool. NODWIN Gaming, South Asia’s leading esports company, in partnership with title sponsor CoinDCX. The week-long online league saw participation from elite men and women grandmasters, international masters, and top junior boys and girls, from India and across the world. The league concluded on October 17, 2021, by awarding its top teams a whopping prize pool of INR 40 lacs and garnered a viewership of 10 Million.
In the 30+ hour long league, a total of 120+ rounds of chess were played. Each team was spearheaded by their owners – top professionals in their respective fields – including Tanmay Bhat (The Kingslayers), Biswa Kalyan Rath and Shreyas Shrinivasan (Krazy Knights), S8UL (Ruthless Rooks), Raftaar – Kalaamkaa (Brutal Bishops), Zakir Khan from Pivotal Pawns and Suhani Shah with Saina Nehwal from Quintessential Queens. The Pivotal Pawns (Abhijeet Gupta, Arjun Kalyan, Bhakti Kulkarni, Ding Liren, Savitha Shri, Zhansaya Abdumalik) and The Kingslayers (Anish Giri, Arpita Mukherjee, D Gukesh, Nana Dzagnidze, Soumya Swaminathan, S. P. Sethuraman) engaged viewers in an edge-of-the-seat finale that had the audience on tenterhooks before the Pivotal Pawns emerged winners after a tie-breaking armageddon game.
Also Read: Nodwin Gaming x PVR: NODWIN and PVR bring Esports to the Big Screen for the first time in India
The Chess Super League concludes with a bang; Zakir Khan’s Pivotal Pawns bags a lion’s share of INR 40 lakh prize pool
“The success of the Chess Super League (CSL) — our foray into the world of online chess, has reiterated our belief that various forms of gaming can come under the umbrella of gaming and esports entertainment. Chess is a fantastic game that teaches you strategy, deep thinking, patience and in the CSL format teamwork. It will do our country good if through tournaments like the Chess Super League, we can get more of India’s youth interested in this phenomenal game. Apart from the players themselves, the team owners along with the storytellers and Samay and Sagar did a splendid job in keeping up the fun and the serious element of the league in a great balance. We look forward to season 2 of CSL very soon!” said Akshat Rathee, Managing Director, NODWIN Gaming.
Samay Raina added “It’s difficult to believe that after only 18 months of starting to stream chess, I have been able to be a part of something this huge and exciting – with top players playing in our league. The whole league has been an emotional roller-coaster and we can’t wait to be back with the next edition. I want to specially thank the fans who have been incredibly supportive throughout this journey.”
