This is really going to be fun. For the first time, North America is hosting the prestigious fee Day World Rapid and Blitz Championships Chess Championships taking place in the heart of New York City's historic Wall Street district, including a special Wall Street gambit uniting the worlds of chess and finance. Joining us now to discuss is fee Day Deputy President vc onand he is a five time World chess champion. Wow. VH Welcome, thanks for joining us here. Talk to us
about why you're in New York. Talk to us about this tournament. How important is it and how important is it in have it in America?
Okay, So, historically the classical World Chess Championship, that is the long time six seven hour format is the most important andreminso, but over the last few years we've started to work on the Rapid and Blitz format. So the rapid is fifteen minutes plus ten seconds per game foot player, so already much faster. And then you have the Blitz which is three minutes into seconds per play up again, so highly sped up. This, as you can imagine, produces
a lot of excitement. It's very fast paced, pulsating you can actually sit there and go oh, and you know it's that saturve event and it's important for us. The second thing is we had the candidates tournament for the Classical World Championship in Toronto in April this year, and we're so we're very, very excited that we have a second important event in the Americas within one year. And you know, it's part of something we're trying to do and so and you know, there's been a lot of excitement,
a lot of growth in the US in chess. Famously, I think Queens Gamberto was the thing which kind of triggered it.
Yeah, now I gotta ask you, I said, chess person, did you think that was a good representation of the sport and some of the people in the in the in the game?
I mean, yes, I have only one or two quibbles the rest, but the rest is very authentic and it felt very natural. I mean you could easily see yourself in that person's shoes. I think it was very accurately done.
Let's talk though, about a women versus a man, and that's not what's actually occurring. There's a women's chess spotlight as well, I understand. So how are we seeing demographics play out in the world of chess right now?
It's becoming a global sport. One of the things that's happened is that technology has managed to make it a truly global sport. Earlier, if you lived in a country, whether or not a lot of chess players, chances are you wouldn't know how to get into the game. Now that problem has been solved. You can watch a game no matter where you are. There are live streams, they're broadcasts, you can follow the game in multiple platforms, and so it has become an ever more global game, and that
is reflected here. I don't remember the exact number, but it is a very large number of nationalities and more than five hundred participants in the men and women's sections together, and I should say it's the open section and the women's section in a sense, the women can play in the open section, but not the other way around. The thing is there is still a gap, but more and more women are starting to beat male grandmasters. The gap
is narrowing. There's always been a kind of gap, but it's narrowing, and so we hope this will trigger more and more women coming to participate in the game as well, because it's quite easy to.
Do, right and this event in New York City, you've got some serious players here. Tell us about who's going to be playing.
Yes, So in addition to yourself, I'm not actually participating, I can in my capacity is definitely for official duties. But we have almost everyone in the top twenty or top thirty, bar two or three. It's the strongest ever edition. So in all the edition's history, this is the one which has the highest average rating, highest average, you know, historical record, all that a performance record, I should say.
And you know, it's fantastic that we were able to host it in Wall Street, you know, a very good location, and that also kind of gives into our team. We're having this conference the Wall Street Gamut. Talking about chess and finance. Again, there's a lot of similarities between the two and there's been a lot of crossovers. A lot of former chess players migrated finance and went on to
be very very successful. At one point there were companies like Bankers Trust Noel, which we're hiring chess players exactly for that reason. But the other thing is I would say that with all the technological development with AI and everything,
the relevance. One of the biggest connections I see is that chess has kind of been ahead of the curve we from the finance perspective, I would say chess is like to the future of where finance will encounter air, which is what happens when AI becomes very, very good at what you do. And because chess is again with
you know, it's finite sixty four squares, it's finite. So the computers were able to solve it, not solve it, but get better at humans much faster, and as a result, learning how to interpret that information has become a key skill for us. Now. Finance, of course much much more complex and may not be reduced like this, but again, as computers get better and better at different areas, you know our experience might be relevant there.
I'm interested victually as many would say, and that we've had on the program before. Paul and I talking to Jenny just about how you educate people around poker playing and women in particular, and understanding risk and probability and ultimately reading people with poker. A professional poker comes money,
and interestingly, with Wall Street comes money. What are the sort of prizes you're having to offer within the world of chess to bring about more and more people who are at this intersection of Wall Street and chess and wanting to be able to sort of tempt those that might be a little bit more financially motivated.
Yes, price funds and chess have been growing clearly as the popularity of the sport grows and our broadcast audience audiences are larger than ever before, So the money is increasing. There's a record price fund for these World WLD Championships, more than million dollars. But you know, we have to keep expanding and getting more, that's clear. So this is part of our is a very important event for us
because we get an incredible number of spectators. It's our second most watched event after the World Championships, and that's why it's so important as we connect with more and more people and hopefully attract more sponsors to the game.
And the worst gambit that has some Wall Street players going to be playing in this, right, Like who's playing that's right?
Well, that are famous people in the world of finance, Einstein and who are all former chess players and quite serious chess players. And so we're trying to play in that connection, all right, How do people watch this?
How do they? Is there a stream somewhere or.
There will be a stream, But you can also attend the conference, okay.
And that's being held were downtown.
Yes, in uh. I don't have the I'll get a thing, but it's basically at.
All right, and you can check out the stream as well. All right, excellent, really interesting stuff on an adjoint says he's a five time world champion and fee D deputy president, joining us here in studio. They've got their chess event going to be down here in Lower Manhattan over the next several days, so that's a good thing.