TWIC is 31. First issue 17th September 1994.
General Chess Stories 2025 ()
Chess.com make changes to Titled Tuesday, announce "Take Take Take" agreement, and EWC qualification process
Mark Crowther - Friday 29th August 2025
Titled Tuesday. | https://www.chess.com/events/info/2025-2026-titled-tuesday-grand-prix
The Titled Tuesday Blitz for the 26th August was the last under the current format. This Chess.com event has run since 2014 and has had an early and late section since 2022.
From the 2nd September there will be just one Titled Tuesday Blitz each week, it will take place at 11am Eastern Standard Time, 17:00 Central European Time and 20:30 Indian time.
Other changes include a move to five minutes per game and a weekly live show produced by the chess app "Take Take Take".
Titled Tuesday will be part of Chess.com's qualification process for the Esports World Cup (EWC) which will take place in Riddah next summer. The not unreasonable bet is that this event will continue to grow in importance, hence the changes now.
The whys and wherefores
The major driver of change is the Esports World Cup of which chess was a part for the first time this year. Chess.com have decided to bundle their Titled Tuesday, SpeedChess Championship (Oct 2025-Feb 2026) and a revived Chess.com Global Championship (March to May 2026) together into a new Champions Chess Tour, the main purpose of which is to provide 12 players for the Esports World Cup in 2026.
The Titled Tuesday events will have 3 "Splits": Autumn Split - September to November 2025; Winter Split - December 2025 to February 2026; Spring Split - March to May 2026 followed by an off-season. The best 8 results from 12 or 13 weeks will count towards a wider leader board, which is named the "Titled Tuesday Grand Prix" there are $30,000 in prizes at the end of each split, along with the £3000 each event. There will be an off season for the remainder of the year.
The time control has also changed. It has been 3 minutes plus 1 second a move but from now on it will be 5 minutes with no increments. The move to no increment aligns with the format used in the EWC. There are pluses and minuses to the new time control, it's blitz, there will always be unfairness no matter what the exact time control, in this case prepare for losses on time in overwhelmingly winning positions, and dead drawn ones such as King and Rook vs King and Rook, and King and Knight vs King and Bishop.
In general I think 5 minutes is a slightly longer time control than 3 minutes plus 1 second a move, I always believed 5m roughly equates to 3m+2spm. It will also mean that there will be a more predictable schedule for each round of Titled Tuesday. In the past a single long game could really extend the playing time for the tournament; in May, Hikaru Nakamura and Justin Zhide Wang, for reasons best known to themselves, concocted an 810 move game.
Chess.com has signed a deal with the company "Take Take Take", which has an app you download to access their chess live broadcasts, they will be covering each TT event in detail. The company was founded in 2023 by Magnus Carlsen and Mats Andre Kristiansen and say they have $9 million in investment funding so far.
"Take Take Take" describe their aims for this deal as "Titled Tuesday has long attracted elite talent, but without dedicated broadcast or storytelling. Now, Take Take Take and Chess.com are relaunching the tournament as a fully fledged must-watch weekly event, complete with professional studio production, high-profile guests and a larger prize pool, aiming to transform it into what Magnus Carlsen describes as the 'Premier League of Chess'."
Esports World Cup 2025 and 2026
The Esports World Cup 2025 took place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia over 7 weeks 7th July to 24th August 2025. In 2025 there were 26 events across 25 games, mostly video games titles such as Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, Dota 2, League of Legends, PUBG, Street Fighter 6 and so on, chess is very much an outlier but its addition was a big part of their publicity. The chess part took place over only a few days, Tue 29th July to Fri 1st Aug 2025. Players don't just play for themselves, but also for a team, in the case of chess, the winner Magnus Carlsen played for "Team Liquid" and the runner up Alireza Firouzja played for "Team Falcons". In the final standings it was the Falcons who won and Liquid who finished second. Signing for a team appears to be very lucrative. With this win Carlsen qualified for the 2026 event.
The "Esports World Cup" (EWC) is run by the "Esports World Cup Foundation" (originally a German organisation now owned by a company called Savvy Games Group) and held its first edition in 2024, although this was a successor to several very similar events including Gamers7 and Gamers8 in the previous two years. When chess joined in 2025 Magnus Carlsen was an official EWC ambassador. Next year it's already known that Riddah will again be the venue, precise dates are not yet announced but it will be in the Summer of 2026. Whilst the EWC is Team based, there has already been an announcement for a "First Esports Nations Cup" which will be country based and take place in November next year, in part this seems a preparation for the first IOC approved "Esports Olympics" in 2027.
Articles:
Major Changes To Titled Tuesday, Take Take Take Joins As Official Broadcaster - Chess.com article
Esports World Cup Returns With Bigger, Year-Round Qualifying Cycle - Chess.com article
Esports Nations Cup November 2026. Esportsinsider.
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