How To Follow Carlsen vs Karjakin On Chess.com

Magnus Carlsen vs Sergey Karjakin. Here are all the match details you need to know to follow the coverage on Chess.com. 

The Facts

The world championship match will be held November 10-30 in the Fulton Market building along the South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan, New York. The players are Magnus Carlsen of Norway, the reigning world champion, and Sergey Karjakin, the winner of the 2016 Candidates' Tournament.

(Click here to quickly jump ahead and view Chess.com's coverage plans for the World Championship.)

The match is intended to be 12 games; the first player to 6.5 points wins the match. In the event of a 6-6 tie, there will be a rapid and blitz playoff. The time control for the classical games is 100 minutes for the first 40 moves, 50 minutes for the next 20 moves, and 15 minutes for the rest of the games. There will be an additional 30 second increment per move starting from move one.

The prize fund is one million dollars (€899,000) with 60 percent going to the winner and 40 percent to the loser (or 55-45 in case of a playoff). PhosAgro and EG Capital Advisors are the main sponsors.

The Schedule 

The Players

Magnus Carlsen (Norway) is the reigning world champion and is defending his title. He became world champion by beating Viswanathan Anand of India in November 2013 in Chennai, India. A year later, he successfully defended his title against the same opponent in Sochi, Russia.

Carlsen has been pretty quiet during the last few weeks. It is known that he is spending his time in the Caribbean, which he acknowledged in the interview after the epic Blitz Battle that he won against Hikaru Nakamura. 

Two news items are worth mentioning here. Anyone who is planning to fly to New York with SAS will be able to play against Magnus via the PlayMagnus app, which has now become available as an option in the planes.

Another story broke last week: As it turns out, the Carlsen team has taken extra security measures "against Russian hackers." Carlsen's manager, who revealed that they are cooperating with Microsoft on the matter, called it a "Pentagon security call."

Meanwhile, it's not exactly clear who is part of Carlsen's team. Only Danish grandmaster and long-time friend Peter Heine Nielsen seems a safe bet right now. Jon Ludvig Hammer is not working for Carlsen this year. He chose to do commentary work for VG and Chess.com.

Sergey Karjakin (Russia) qualified for the match by winning the eight-player Candidates' Tournament in March in Moscow. He still holds the record for being the youngest player to become a grandmaster (he did so in 2002, aged 12 years and seven months). This will be Karjakin's first-ever shot at the world title.

Like Carlsen, Karjakin has spent the last few weeks in the Caribbean. He has been less secretive about his whereabouts: He's in Miami Beach. Several photos of him together with his second and friend Shakhriyar Mamedyarov have been posted on social media.

The latest news has been reported by Jonathan Tisdall. Ian Nepomniachtchi, who has helped Carlsen in the past, is now going to work for Karjakin too.

Agon's Plans 

Agon, the company that holds the commercial rights to events in the world championship cycle, is the organizer of the match. It will be providing official coverage on its WorldChess website, which will include a live video stream with multiple camera angles, 360-degree VR, and expert commentary.

Two names have been revealed. For starters, the main expert in the studio is none other than Judit Polgar, the strongest female player of all time.

"Magnus Carlsen vs Sergey Karjakin is shaping up to be one of the most exciting matches of the last 100 years," Polgar said. "Agon has invested heavily to transform the broadcast of the match, with new innovations such as virtual reality, and I am excited to be part of it."

Agon also managed to contract Kaja Marie Snare, the popular Norwegian chess reporter who until recently worked for TV2. (After covering the match in New York, she will start working for NRK.) Snare will appear in this week's ChessCenter and discuss her role in New York.

It's important to note that the official coverage won't be free. A season pass to view the entire 12-round championship online can be purchased for $15 on the official website.

Chess.com's Plans: During The Games

Agon is providing a widget for websites to broadcast the games between Carlsen and Karjakin. Chess.com will be placing this widget on our Chess.com/TV page, alongside our chat and Twitter windows.

The widget will include a chessboard, the actual moves, the clock times, and analysis by an engine that will think up to 32 ply (half-moves) deep. The widget has been embedded on the right side of this article so that you can see what it looks like at the moment.

Chess.com's Plans: After The Games

After each game, Chess.com will be producing a daily ChessCenter starting at 5 p.m. Pacific time (8 p.m. New York, 1 a.m. London, 2 a.m. Paris, 3 a.m. Moscow) or soon after the game has finished. IM Danny Rensch will be hosting the show together with GM Robert Hess and lots of special guests. We can already announce appearances by GMs Hikaru Nakamura, Jon Ludvig Hammer, Alex Yermolinsky, Alexander Ipatov, IM Nazi Paikidze and WFM Alexandra Botez.

The ChessCenter team looks to provide a service for the majority of fans who simply cannot watch the entire, usually 3.5-hour broadcasts of the game in progress (sometimes longer). The daily recap will go through the game, discuss the opening phase and key moments, the situation in the match and all the other news and gossip available—assisted by our on-site reporters FM Mike Klein and Peter Doggers, who will be responsible for news reports and video interviews.