After its latest acquisition of gaming IPs and talents of OML Entertainment, Nodwin Gaming is back again with another big and exciting announcement. This time the company has managed to partner with ChessBase India and Samay Raina to launch India’s first-ever online chess league called the Chess Super League.
CSL will be India’s first-ever live-casted chess league that will feature some of the top grandmasters and international masters from India and the world battling it out to claim the Champion title and win a whopping INR 40 Lakhs in prize money.
The first season of the CSL will be from 11th October to 17th October and feature 6 teams of 6 players each including 6 top Grandmasters from across the globe among Men and Women – 6 top men and women players from India and 6 top Indian junior boys and girls. A whopping INR 40 Lakhs prize pool will be distributed among the winner of Season 1 of CSL.
The 6 teams will be spearheaded by franchise owners who will support and represent their squad throughout the Chess Super League. The franchise owners of the debut edition include the likes of Tanmay Bhat, Raftaar (Kalamkaar), Zakir Khan, MortaL (S8ul), Biswa Kalyan Rath, and Shreyas Srinivasan (CEO, PayTM Insider). These franchise owners will act as ambassadors and will be the torchbearers for their teams for the entirety of the league.
World Chess Grandmasters like Ding Liren, Hikaru Nakamura, Anish Giri, Teimour Radjabov, Hou Yifan (the strongest female player in the world), Muzychuk sisters, Nana Dzagnidze, Alexandra Kosteniuk, Vidit Gujrathi, Sasikiran Krishnan, Koneru Humpy, Dronavalli Harika, Tania Sachdev and young grandmasters like Gukesh, Raunak Sadhwani, Savitha Shri and others will be competing against each other in the first season of CSL.
“I have enjoyed streaming chess with Sagar and have been incredibly lucky to have some of the best players in the world play chess on my channel and the best fans in the world watching us have fun week after week. The logical next step is to launch a league that will feature some of the best talents from India and around the world and I can’t be happier than to be able to do it now. Fans will love the competitive intensity of what we have planned and as always will enjoy the thrill of watching high-quality chess with us,” said Samay Raina.
All the league matches will be broadcasted live on Samay’s YouTube channel and will feature the duo of Sagar Shah (CEO, ChessBase India) and Samay as the official hosts and commentators. The extremely entertaining yet highly informative streams of the duo have garnered over 650 million views to date.
Indian chess is on the rise and experts all across the world have dubbed India as the next powerhouse in the world of chess. We have many strong players, we have many young talents. This online league will give more exposure and opportunity to Indian players, especially the youngsters. Right since its inception, ChessBase India has tried its best to power chess in India and this online league is a step in the right direction
Sagar Shah, Founder, Chessbase India
Chess Super League is the first property that we are announcing after the acquisition of the gaming business of OML and is a testimony to the fact that gaming, eSports, and comedy have significant synergies and shall come together in a big way. It is a sampling of many such collaborations between the different forms of gaming entertainment that the world will see
Akshat Rathee, Managing Director, NODWIN Gaming
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