MPL announces Chess Mahayudh, India’s biggest chess tournament, Viswanathan Anand endorses event

Leading esports and digital gaming platform Mobile Premier League (MPL) announced the launch of India’s biggest chess tournament on its platform, christened as ‘MPL Chess Mahayudh’.

The 12-hour long online tournament, to be conducted on 21s July, will follow the speed chess format (with total of 3 minutes given to a player in a particular game). The tournament has already garnered over 2 lakh registrations, making it the biggest ever Indian chess tournament organised online and offline.

The total prize pool for the event is Rs. 10 lakhs for the top 30,000 players, with the first prize winner getting a cash reward of Rs. 5 lakhs.

Chess grandmaster and Padma Vibhushan award winner Viswananthan Anand announced the event in his tweet and a video released by MPL on social media.

Commenting on the announcement, Sai Srinivas Kiran G, co-founder and CEO of Mobile Premier League noted, “We are thrilled to launch the Mahayudh Chess tournament on MPL. This is a major landmark in our effort to keep our platform exciting to both casual and professional gamers.

We believe that real-time, multiplayer games are the future of digital gaming. Chess is one of the oldest strategy-based multiplayer game with deep roots to India’s culture. We’re proud to host this tournament and we expect it to be the largest online chess tournament in terms of number of participants competing on a single platform.”

Announcing his association with the chess tournament, Anand added, “I am excited to introduce chess to India’s growing digital gaming community. I am sure MPL Chess Mahayudh will be a closely contested event. It’s a great platform to introduce youngsters to the game and I am very excited to see them showcase their talent in this tournament.”