Svidler takes on winners of FIDE/Gazprom/Zenit competition
At the end of September, Zenit, a popular football club from St. Petersburg (Russia), Gazprom, General Sponsor of the Online Olympiad, and FIDE joined their efforts to stage a fun and exciting competition. Those who followed @?????_??? ????????? account had a unique chance play against GM Peter Svidler together with Anatoliy Tymoshchuk and win signed Zenit’s shirt. In order to do that, they had to catch three chess puzzles in their stories over September 19-20-21 and submit the solution to each of them in the answer to the story by 9 am CET the next day. It was amazing that so many people (fifty to be exact) solved all three chess problems given in @zenit_spb Instagram stories. A random draw held on Instagram Live (Sept 23, 6 pm CET) picked 15 lucky ones to play in the simul with GM Peter Svidler: @individoom, @dawut504, @mikhail_manuilov, @arjunkalyan617, @contr4s, @leonidkudriavtsev3, @gorkemcanakcili, @niall_fitzgerald16, @andyport2014, @elena.antipova.thymy, @say_my_name_quietly, @alex.z307, @ololoshenkin, @rostickkin, @aleksandra_stepanova_86. Two players – Anton Bagretsov and Bakhtiyar Askarov – managed to win their games against the renowned GM. They will receive Zenit shirts signed by the whole team, Svidler and Tymoshchuk. Anton, who played his game in Zenit’s shirt, will surely be happy to see his collection growing. Two more players made draws: Viktor Korennoy and ‘Mr-Najdorf’. 12 games finished in favor of the grandmaster, including the one against Zenit’s trainer Anatoliy Tymoshchuk. In a short interview after the simul, the grandmaster praised the opponents and admitted that his result could have been worse. Congratulations to the winners! All the participants of the simul will also get a shirt with Svidler and Tymoshchuk autographs. The simultaneous exhibition was streamed live on Zenit Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl3dKdWwtjA
Play Magnus seeks listing on Oslo Stock Exchange
(Oslo, 24 September 2020) The Play Magnus Group has applied to list on the Oslo Børs’ Merkur Market. The technology company plans to raise capital in connection with the listing. Among the cornerstone investors are the American asset manager Luxor Capital, DNB Capital Management, TIN Fonder, and TD Veen. The co-founder and chairman of the board of the Play Magnus Group Anders Brandt said: “The company has developed enormously from a standalone app to becoming an industry leader with an ecosystem of innovative chess services. Our ambition is to create the world’s best experiences for playing, learning, and watching chess. This is by far the biggest investment ever in chess, and a listing on Merkur Market will secure a solid platform for further growth.” The Play Magnus Group has a 12-month revenue run rate of approximately USD 7 million and demonstrated the organic growth in the first half of this year of approximately 120 percent. “The market is growing, and we are in an early phase which requires further investments. We will invest heavily in technology development in the future and the company does not rule out further acquisitions. We will build on the success of the 2020 Chess Tour and further develop this to its full potential.” he added. The Play Magnus Group offers services for everyone to play, watch, and learn chess. Professional players can teach, create content, and compete on the company’s various platforms. The Group’s services consist of the Play Magnus App Suite, chess24, Chessable, and CoChess. In addition, in 2020 the Group launched a professional online chess competition, the Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour, which gained significant interest and captured viewers worldwide. The Play Magnus Group has more than 3 million registered users across platforms and approximately 35,000 monthly paying customers worldwide. In connection with the listing on Merkur Market on the Oslo Stock Exchange, the plan is to raise approximately NOK 400 million (USD ~42 million) in a combined primary and secondary offering. Magnus Carlsen, the current World Chess Champion, said: “The company has a unique vision and strategy for bringing chess to a wider audience. Our model will help many more chess players and coaches to be able to make a living from chess. The company has just started on this journey and I look forward to continuing to be a part of this adventure.” The private placement prices the Play Magnus Group at NOK 796 million. To stimulate liquidity for the listed shares, the original founders of Play Magnus AS, chess24 and Chessable will sell some of their shares as part of the private placement prior to the listing. The majority of the shares in the sale will be sold by LT Holdings Ltd, the largest current shareholder in Play Magnus. The plan is to carry out a book-building process starting on 24 September, with the first day of trading during the week of October 5, provided that the application is approved by the Oslo Stock Exchange. ABG Sundal Collier and SpareBank 1 Markets AS are the company’s financial advisers, Simonsen Vogt Wiig is the legal adviser while Corporate Communications AS is the adviser on IR and communications. For further comments, please contact: Leon Watson,Press,+44 778 607 8770,leon@chessable.com About the Play Magnus Group Founded in Norway by four-time World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen, the Play Magnus Group is a global leader in the chess industry focused on providing the premier digital experiences for the millions of chess players and students around the world. The company offers eLearning and entertainment services via its market-leading brands: chess24, Chessable, CoChess, Play Magnus and the Champions Chess Tour. The Group’s mission is to grow chess to make the world a smarter place.
ChessMatec announces free workshop
FIDE has recently entered a cooperation agreement with ChessMatec – Chess for Kids, an all-in-one chess learning platform. Next Thursday (October 1), the creators of this app will offer an online workshop to demonstrate its main features and will discuss the educative aspects of their tool. The workshop, open to everyone, will take place at 17:00 CET. In order to register, please send an email to ??????@??????????.??? with a copy to ?????????@????.??? This workshop might be of special interest to chess teachers, since “ChessMatec for Teachers” offers multi-student support and includes a Classroom Management solution that allows teachers to easily create classrooms, import students, and see helpful metrics. ChessMatec is currently available in English, Russian, Spanish, French, German, Turkish, Dutch, Polish, and Italian. Thanks to this agreement FIDE members are entitled to a 50% discount on yearly purchases of ChessMatec.
IMPORTANT: Online Olympiad for People with Disabilities
Dear member Federations: We would like to remind you that you can register more than one team in the upcoming Online Olympiad for People with Disabilities, to be held between November 20 and December 3, 2020. However, please note that all participants have to be previously registered in the directory of players with disabilities at the DIS website. You can check this database at this link: https://dis.fide.com/wr0. All your team members must be included in the database: this is a mandatory condition to be a participant in the event. In case any of your players are not included yet in the database, please send the players’ names and details to the FIDE VP Akaki Iashvili at iashvili.fide@gmail.com before 30 September 2020, using this form. Please provide a passport-size colored photo of your players as well. The Online Olympiad for the Disabled is sponsored by Pengcheng Chess Club.
Spanish Team Championship gets underway in Linares
From September 23 to September 29 Linares, the city known for its chess traditions, is hosting the highest division of the Spanish Team Championship (Campeonato de España por Equipos de Club de División de Honor). Eight best teams with six boards in each (one woman) are competing in the round-robin format. The defending champion C.A. MAGIC EXTREMADURA from Merida will face a real challenge battling with higher-rated teams such as C.A.C. BENIAJÁN – DUOCHESS (headed by David Navara and David Anton), C.A. SILLA – BOSCH SERINSYS (with Anton Korobov and Alexei Shirov on top boards), and C.A. ANDREU PATERNA (lead by Jorden Van Forrest and Francisco Vallejo) In Round 1 C.A. MAGIC EXTREMADURA suffered a somewhat unexpected defeat at the hands of C.A. SOLVAY 2½-3½, as C.A.C. BENIAJÁN – DUOCHESS clobbered C.A. COLLADO VILLALBA 4½-1½, whereas two other rating favorites C.A. SILLA – BOSCH SERINSYS and C.A. ANDREU PATERNA drew their match 3-3. Photo: FEDA Official site: www.feda.org