By Pedro Pablo Morejon
HAVANA TIMES – I’ve been waiting months for this to happen. I know they announce it every year, but the unspeakable has been a slow time coming. I sometimes doubt whether one of the most important events will be reissued, but it can’t be, not this year when I’ve picked up on my childhood passion…
I sign into my account on Chess.com and an announcement finally appears on the home page: 2024 Chess.com Daily Chess Championship.
It’s the biggest chess tournament in the world, which will kick off on December 31st. Every year, over 30,000 players compete for the title of chess world champion playing on Chess.com (there are already over 35,000 people registered as I’m writing this article, which must be a new record).
Not just that, there are also categories for best game, best play, best video and best blog, for prizes worth $100 USD, with prizes amounting to a total of $5,000 USD, which I think is ridiculous for a company with over 100 million active players with revenue of over 1 billion USD per year, between ads and users with a Premium subscription.
Not me, I don’t pay anything, I only access the free features and what’s most important: playing and competing. I can’t afford this luxury: $10 USD per month which would give me unlimited access to different functions.
This mega-tournament is made up of 5 rounds or stages. Every competitor is placed depending on their Elo rating (qualification) in groups of 12, making a total of 2900-3000 groups and only the first place winner of each group makes it to the second round.
This eliminates 90% of players already, leaving approximately 250 or more groups of 12 competitors, who will play to take first place again to go on to the next round which would be the third round and so on, until it’s the last round with the “creme de la creme”, and a champion is made.
You face 11 players in every round with black and white pieces for a total of 22 games at the same time with a 24-hour time limit to respond to each play, making it a demanding and exhausting tournament. I see long hours ahead of me in the night, every day, analyzing positions on the board to make the best play I can, hoping my Internet connection doesn’t play tricks on me.
This is a prestigious event where every player is analyzed by Chess.com’s algorithm and software to detect potential cheating using systems to analyze games, thereby promoting fair play.
Year after year, the strongest players win this tournament, those who have grand master or international master titles already under their belt. Recently, in October, Marcin Szymanski emerged champion, a strong international master from Poland.
There’s pretty much no chance I’ll win or reach the final round, but I think I can make it to the third round and take away a prize for my chess blog. Why not?
So, amidst a bleak landscape for New Year for Cubans living on the island, I at least have this shred of hope. You have to cling onto something to survive another day.
Read more from the diary of Pedro Pablo Morejon here.
