Esports World Cup 2025

The 2025 Edition of the Esports World Cup (EWC) Chess Finals promises to be a thrilling showdown of skill, stamina, and strategy, featuring an inventive structure that combines classic competition formats with new innovations in player seeding. This year’s event is not only a celebration of elite online chess but also an introduction of some of the well-known esports elements to the chess community.

Step One: Drafting the Groups

The 16 elite players invited to the EWC 2025 Finals were split into four groups of four players each—but unlike standard Swiss or rating-paired pools, the grouping followed a drafting format with a unique twist.

Group Leaders from the CCT:
The four finalists from the 2025 Chess.com Champions Tour (CCT) automatically became group leaders. These four players, Magnus, Hikaru, Ian, and Maxime (MVL), lead each of the four groups as top seeds.

Drafting the Remaining Players by Rapid Rating:
The remaining twelve participants were ordered based on their Chess.com rapid ratings at the time of the draft. One by one, the group leaders picked the players from top down, and they were placed into groups using a balanced snake draft format to ensure no group would be too stacked or too light. This draft system rewarded recent form while keeping the draw dynamic, unpredictable yet fair.

Watch how the draft happened (from 33:30 till 38:00)

Group Stage: Double Elimination Knockouts

Once formed, each of the four groups battled through a double-elimination knockout format.

This means: Each group ran a small bracket where a player needed two wins to qualify, or two losses to be eliminated.
Matches were played as best-of-two games. This group stage format ensured that each player had at least two matches, and no player was eliminated after the first loss. We had Ian in Group A, Nihal in Group B, and Nodirbek in Group D, who all lost their first match and went on to win two matches in the lower bracket to qualify for the Playoffs.

Bidding Armageddon to decide tied matches

If a match ends in a 1–1 tie after two games, it is decided by a Bidding Armageddon—a dramatic tiebreak format where players compete for the right to play Black, who receives draw odds.
Each player secretly writes down a bid indicating the amount of time they are willing to play with as Black. The lower bid wins: that player takes Black with the bid time and draw odds; the opponent plays White with the full 10 minutes.
Referees provide bidding cards for the players to record their time offers. Once both bids are submitted, they are revealed simultaneously. The player who submitted the lower bid is assigned Black. (Btw, until last year, players not only bid for the time, but they could also choose the time! This was changed for 2025 because less than 1% of the players chose white in the last 3 years of the bidding armageddon history at Chess.com.)
If both players submit the same bid, the times are erased and the bidding process is repeated.

Side note on Levon: Levon jokingly said in his interview that “I just remembered I can play chess”. No joke! After winning the Freestyle in Vegas, he came to play in the Last Change Qualifier. It was a complicated event that determined the 4 players who got invited to join the other 12 players in the EWC Finals. From more than 200 players, he managed to qualify, and now through the group stage and in the Playoffs! Amazing player!

Playoff Stage: Single Elimination Bracket with Layered Matches

The remaining eight players—two from each group— are progressing to a single-elimination knockout bracket, but the depth of match formats will increase significantly.

Quarterfinals (QF): Best of 4 games.
Semifinals (SF): Best of 6 games.

Grand Final:

The championship match is a set of matches. Players start with two matches, each a best-of-four game. If both players win one match each, a Grand Final Reset is triggered: a final match of best-of-two games will crown the champion. This guarantees a conclusive finish while allowing for dramatic comebacks.

A New Seeding System: Balancing Fairness and Variety

Perhaps the most novel element of EWC 2025 Chess Final is the seeding into the single elimination bracket. This system is new to the chess world, but is known to many other esports that use bracket-style formats. It is designed to fairly reward group performance without sacrificing competitive balance.

Two Pools for Knockout Seeding:

Pool A (Group Winners): The four players who won their group undefeated (2–0 records). 
These were Levon, Arjun, Alireza, and Magnus.
Pool B (Group Runners-Up): The four players who placed second in their group (2–1 records).
These were Ian, Nihal, Hikaru, and Nodirbek.

Here’s how the seeding works:

1. Ordering by Rating: Within each pool, players are ranked based on their Chess.com rapid ratings at the time of qualification.
2. Placing Pool A (Group Winners): The top two rated players in Pool A are seeded to opposite ends of the knockout bracket, ensuring they can only meet in the final. This was Magnus and Alireza.
   The remaining two group winners (3rd and 4th rated, Levon and Arjun) are randomly assigned to the two other branches, avoiding clustering.
3. Placing Pool B (Group Runners-Up): The four second-place finishers are then randomly assigned to the remaining quarterfinal slots, but with one constraint:
   No second-place player may be placed in the same half of the bracket as the first-place finisher from their original group. This avoids immediate rematches and respects the group stage outcomes.
   This means Levon couldn't get Ian, Arjun couldn't get Nihal, Alireza couldn't get Hikaru, and Magnus couldn't get Nodirbek.

Here is the Playoffs bracket (click here to go to the /events page):

Conclusion: A Format Worth Watching—and Remembering
With its blend of structured fairness, exciting formats, and competitive drama, the EWC 2025 Chess Finals format represents a significant step towards a new chess tournament design. By borrowing from esports and refining traditional structures, the event balances rating accuracy with the unpredictability that makes chess truly thrilling. Whether you're a grandmaster or an Esports fan new to chess, this is one tournament you won’t want to miss.

Precision Behind the Scenes: A Tribute to Our Referees

A big shoutout to the phenomenal team of referees who have made this event run with such professionalism and care. Chess players are creatures of habit—and arbiters even more so—yet I’ve found myself learning and genuinely enjoying this new Esports-style approach to tournament operations.

Under the steady leadership of Dimitri Cavalcanti, our Senior Tournament Manager, this dedicated crew has gone above and beyond: setting up computers, running tests with players, rehearsing with broadcast production, and ensuring everything flows seamlessly, on time and without a hitch. Behind the scenes, they maintain meticulous logs of every aspect of the event—from game timings and referee assignments to incident reports and technical issues—ensuring nothing slips through the cracks. I feel incredibly lucky to have been given a chance to work with these guys, and learning so much that will help me be a better arbiter going forward!

Amazing crew at the EWC ! @SonicV_GG @Simoneu01 @xhatrosh @BrunoF41SC4 @DimitriPC @rrrepsu @Greensoup91 @SageeFN #EWC2025 pic.twitter.com/QLOtvEkyBN

— IA Judit Sztaray (@ChessArbitress) July 28, 2025