With in-person events being canceled last year, major Chess players and personalities took to various streaming platforms to share their craft. As a result, the audience getting behind Chess saw a meteoric rise. With Esports organizations now signing Chess players for their rosters, WFM Anna Cramling, our very own Panda, created and hosted the first Esports tournament of its kind!
Anna took to her Twitter to announce Squid Chess, in collaboration with Chess.com, inspired by the popular Netflix series Squid Game. The tournament took place on 24th October 2021 on Anna’s Twitch channel, providing a plethora of twists and turns throughout the broadcast.
Squid Chess And Players
Similar to the Smashers Gambit, the event saw 32 players from across the Internet including various chess pros, fighting game players, and popular streaming personalities. The players competed for a prize pool of $8,000 through a number of games, with half the players getting eliminated after Game 1 itself.
- Game 1: GREEN LIGHT KING UP - Chess pieces combined with trivia-based true or false
- Game 2: CHESS OF WAR - Each Chess piece represented a team with added twists
- Game 3: BUGHOUSE - Traditional Chess paired with the ability to capture opponent’s pieces
- Game 4: CHESSER vs PROFESSOR: Players guessing the Chess player in the matches shown
The tournament concluded with the two finalists playing a 5+5 “Auto balanced” Chess match, with Kostya Kavutskiy coming out on top and the former Panda, Wolfey getting second place. Four Pandas were also present in the tournament as participants, namely - Marss, iBDW, Kizzie, and ESAM.
Sponsors
Panda and HyperX served as the sponsors for the event, providing giveaway prizes and merch for the viewers. Panda further helped the event with the logistical and graphical support, making sure the event takes place with negligible delays.
Panda is incredibly proud of the success of Squid Chess. Our team took the opportunity, fueled by Anna’s brilliant idea, to bring the different worlds of Esports together. While Anna is busy finding the “beautiful gold confetti”, we would like to congratulate her once again for the success of this event. Panda is looking forward to diving into more of such events and creating new connections all around.