World No. 3 Fabiano Caruana commented on the conflict over the clash of dates between the Grand Chess Tour and Esports World Cup. Fabiano pointed out that the EWC organizers deliberately ignored the GCT schedule and noted that the GCT is an established tour with virtually unchanged dates.

Fabiano Caruana

Fabiano Caruana

World No. 3

“Obviously, it’s bad when major tournaments overlap. And this is especially difficult because players have obligations to their teams — a contract obligating them to represent their team. At the same time, they might also have a contract with the Grand Chess Tour, like I do.

My opinion is this: the Grand Chess Tour did nothing wrong. They announced the dates in advance, invited the players in advance, and the players accepted the invitations. And then the Esports World Cup decided they didn’t care and forced the players to choose.

This is simply a breach of contract. Players who accepted invitations to the Grand Chess Tour are automatically excluded from the Esports World Cup. Obviously, the responsibility lies with EWC — if they made a mistake, they have to change the dates.

They did it deliberately, the GCT is too prominent to be ‘overlooked’. It’s been around for ten years, it’s the longest-running and strongest chess tour outside of the World Championship cycle.

Honestly, what are you doing? It’s just insane to plan like this! If the Esports World Cup is interested in keeping the players, they should reschedule. If not, let them do whatever they want! I think if Magnus were playing in GCT, none of this would have happened at all…”

Elite world chess players have published an open letter addressed to the organisers of GCT and EWC on February 10. Levon Aronian, Fabiano Caruana, Alireza Firouzja, Anish Giri, Vincent Keymer, Praggnanandhaa R and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave called on the organisers to consider adjustments or practical solutions that would allow players to participate in both events.

The Esports World Cup is a premier annual international gaming tournament and festival held in Riyadh, with a $1,500,000 prize fund. Grand Chess Tour is an annual circuit of international chess tournaments with a $2,000,000 prize pool across 2 Classical tournaments, 3 Rapid & Blitz events and the Grand Finals.

Credit: Lennart Ootes