While the most-watched online chess event, the Play Magnus Group’s Meltwater Champions Chess Tournament 2021, has won much attention worldwide, yet another online tour is getting ready for the launch. The Chess legends Judit Polgar and Vladimir Kramnik come together to join hands with the Play Magnus Group for a fresh new online tour. The elite tour is designed with a focus to advance gender equality in chess and ensure female participation as well as to coach and promote upcoming young players.
The Julius Baer Challengers Chess Tour will showcase some of the world’s top rising talent and strike a healthy balance between male and female competitors.
The tour is worth a $100,000 prize pot, and ensures the privilege to compete in the prestigious Meltwater Champions Chess Tour as well as coaching under the stalwarts and other educational opportunities.
Education and Chess: what you must know
Balancing the gender scales in chess
With Judit Polgar and Vladimir Kramnik at the helm, the Challengers Chess tour will run parallel to the highly successful Meltwater Champions Chess Tour.
The budding talents of the chess kingdom will get a taste of the limelight and the opportunity to be steered by top-level coaches. The tour will have 20 players who will be divided into teams between the coaching champions.
Polgar - the strongest female player in chess today- observes that men have been dominating chess and its top events for long and the new Challenges Chess Tour will be a pleasant breakthrough in changing the patterns.
As for Vladimir Kramnik, it is a meaningful moment to come together with Polgar – after years of numerous face-offs over the chessboard - to compete as their teams would be pitched against each other, pruning young talents from the GenNext of chess to reach their best. The former World champion believes that the Julius Baer Challengers Chess Tour will spur the future elite in the world of chess into action.
The Tour has been modeled to address the dearth of strong female players in today’s chess and to promote emerging talent. As per FIDE reports last year, out of more than1700 grandmasters in chess, only 37 are female.
Judit Polgar has been a good example of what women can achieve in chess. The female GM from Hungary had an extraordinary career that includes crushing the legendary Bobby Fischer's long record of being the youngest GM in history. In 2002, Polgar had the rare victory of beating Garry Kasparov, thus becoming the first and only woman player to defeat a world No.1 player.
Other World Champions that Judit has toppled include Anatoly Karpov, Vasily Smyslov, Boris Spassky, and Viswanathan Anand. At the age of 29, in 2005, Judith Polgar peaked in her career, ranking eighth in the world of chess champions.
The 44-year-old female grandmaster believes in the educative element of the sport and says that it has been her mission to demonstrate how chess can be utilized as a powerful tool in education. Through the new tour and her partnership with the Play Magnus Group, Polgar hopes to introduce some of the best female players to the female fans of chess.
Wrap-up
Keeping in line with the current trend of spiced-up reality shows and competition events, the Julius Baer Challengers Chess Tour is expected to arrive with its share of exciting drama and nail-biting games.
The winner from each event will be qualified to participate in the flagship series of the Play Magnus Group – the $1.5 million Meltwater Champions Chess Tour.
The new tour will have Julius Baer, the Swiss private bank that supports the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, as its title partner. According to Larissa Alghisi Rubner, Chief Communications Officer at Julius Baer, it is a thrilling concept to support as the tour is intended to advance gender equality and promote rising stars.
The new Tour will start on the 8th of April and have four 4-day rapid tournaments that will be played on chess24 (with live coverage). The Final will be held from 9th September to the 13th.
Stay with Mind Mentorz to catch glimpses of global events in chess. At Mind Mentorz, our vision resonates well with Judit Polgar’s perception of the educational value of the sport. We passionately believe in the way chess molds young minds and develop cognitive thinking and skill-building in children. To know more about rewiring your child’s brains by cognitive learning through chess and our chess coaching centres in Bangalore, call us at +91 9606847428.