The first season of the Global Chess League (GCL) is taking place in Dubai. The partnership to create it was first announced in June 2021. FIDE partners with Tech Mahindra, which is the IT arm of Mahindra Group that evolved out of the Indian automotive corporation Mahindra & Mahindra. The CEO billionaire Anand Mahindra is personally involved. A subsidiary Tech Mahindra Global Chess League AG has been registered in Opfikon near Zurich in Switzerland.
It is planned to add more franchises from abroad. For now all six franchises, as the teams are called, are Indian. ChessTech learned from business writer Omkar Khandekar, whose own story is behind a paywall, that three franchises are already invested in popular team sports like Cricket and Kabbadi, the other three start out with chess. The only non-Indian sponsor is the Dubai Sports Council. The total investment is worth several million USD.
The players come from all over the globe with the biggest contingent from India followed by Russia. Most top players have accepted to play including Magnus Carlsen. The other super star of the event is Vishy Anand, who not only heads a team but also consulted in the creation of the league.
Each team of six has to have two women, one junior, one “icon” and two more men. Women play women, juniors play juniors, icons play icons, leaving no room for upsets. The compositions were decided by draft, but it is not known if that took the form of an auction or was done by lot. While the teams are evenly matched their makeup looks arbitrary.
While rapid chess is not in short supply, the GCL is yet another rapid event (15 minutes + 10 seconds/move). The players have only one such game a day and would be available to be engaged much more in the production of recaps and stories. Content for social media is preproduced by the league’s PR team, and the players seem contractually obliged to distribute it on their channels. More promising look the fan app for Android and a Metaverse viewing space.
Managers, arbiters, technicians, streamers and commentators have also been flown in, all long-distance to the summer heat of Dubai where everything happens in air-con, adding to the high CO2 impact of the event. Hybrid chess is a green alternative. FIDE has opened up to this arbiter supervised way of playing at a distance but has not started promoting it, even though hybrid chess looks ideal for international team competitions. A true global league would allow teams to compete in front of a home crowd including their sponsors and local media.
Ways to improve for a second GCL season include
let teams compete hybridly under arbiter supervision
set a longer time control between rapid and classical chess
split the season into sub stages
remove the fixed board order to allow for upsets
support player communication but don’t kill the authenticity.