Who is the Richest Chess Player in the World?
“Every chess master was once a beginner.” Irving Chernev coined this statement, and it’s true. A professional chess player’s salary is around $100,000 and more every year in the world.
Perhaps you might be asking yourself who is the wealthiest chess player in the world; well, the answer is Magnus Carlsen. Keep reading this article for more details about him and the chess player’s salary.
Do Chess Players Make Money?
The world’s best chess players make their money from playing the game. Many people don’t know they can earn extra cash just from playing chess. If you are one of them, don’t worry; keep scrolling to learn more.
You can earn a living from chess as an amateur chess player while playing in little weekly competitions. Magnus Carlsen is a good example of the world’s highest-paid chess player, but how much does Magnus Carlsen make? The answer is that he drives around 4 million a year through prize money, licensing, exhibitions, and appearance fees.
Furthermore, Magnus Carlsen’s full name is Sven Magnus Oen Carlsen. He was born on November 30, 1990, in Tonsberg, Norway. In 2013 Carlsen became the second youngest world champion at 22; his father made a huge contribution to his chess career after coaching him to play chess from when he was only five years old.
Carlsen’s first tournament to play chess was when he was eight years old. He won the second position in the boy’s under-12 division at the 2002 Federal Internationale des Eches (FIDE) World Youth Chess Championship in Iraklion, Greece.
In January 2004, Carlsen came in the first position in his first competition in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, Carlsen was playing in a low category group against the players who were adults; he won with a 29-move checkmate. After the victory, American chess player Lubomir Kavalek gave him the nickname “Mozart of Chess.”
Carlsen also managed to defeat former world champion Anatoly Karpov and drew with another former champion, Garry Kasparov, in a blitz chess match the same year in Reykjavik, Iceland (where they play chess at a game faster pace than normal).
In April 2004, Carlsen became a grandmaster after finishing in second position at the Dubai Open Chess Championship. In 2005, he came in 10th at the World Chess Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, thus making him the youngest player to qualify for a place in the FIDE World Chess Championship later in Mexico City.
On the contrary, in the first round of the game, Levon Aronian, an Armenian chess player, won the World Championship in the 7th position. At the same time, Carson got defeated by coming in the 10th position.
One of the all-time top competition performances was Carlsen’s victory at the Pearl Spring Chess Tournament in Nanjing, China, in October 2009 with 8 out of 10 points. In November, he won the World Blitz Championship (where the players got 2 minutes and an extra 2 seconds per move) in Moscow.
FIDE declared Carlsen in January as the best player in the world. At 19 years, Carlsen was the youngest player in the first position. The same year he started modeling by accepting a contract from the Dutch G-star clothing brand to model its denim clothing in advertising campaigns.
Carlsen surprised the chess World in November 2010 when he forewent the 2011 candidate matches to choose a challenger to compete against Indian chess player Viswanathan Anand for the world championship.
Carlsen argued that there was a weakness and that the reigning champion should not receive an automatic spot in the final round. Nevertheless, Magnus Carlsen took part in the 2013 Candidates Tournament in London.
Despite losing in the last round to Russian player Peter Svidler, Magnus Carlsen had won enough games earlier to defeat Vladimir Kramnik (who had the same number of points) and earn the challenge spot against Anand.
Carlsen defeated Anand in 10 games with a score of 3 wins and seven draws in November 2013 at the world championship match in Chennai, India. After Kasparov, Carlsen was the second youngest player to win the world championship.
In addition, Carlsen defended his title successfully in a rematch against Anand in 2014 in Sochi, Russia, with a record of 3 wins,7 draws, and losses. Carlsen won the world Rapid Championship in the same year (in which players are allowed a total of 15 minutes with an extra 10 seconds for each move) in Dubai, and he won the same title again in 2015 in Berlin.
After 12 games of the 2016 World Championship in Newyork City, Carlsen and Karjakin had a tie. In a 4-game quick round with each player having just 25 minutes on the clock and 10 seconds added to each move. He defeated Karjakin after winning two games.
On the final move of game 4, Magnus Carlsen decisively won the match when he sacrificed his queen to set up a checkmate on the next move. In 2018 at the World Championship, he successfully defended his Championship once more.
After 12 games, Carlsen and an American player Fabiano Caruana had a tie, but he won three games in the tie-breaking rapid round. In 2019, Carlsen became the first person to hold all three FIDE titles: Blitz, Quick and Regular, after his win in Moscow.
Carlsen either won or drew during his undefeated streak in chess, which lasted from 2018 to 2020. He defeated Russian player Ian Nepomniachtchi to win the world championship title for the fifth time in 2021 in Dubai. Of the11 games, he got a tie for two and won 4 matches.
In the 6th game of the series, which took 136 moves over 7 hours and 45 minutes, Carlsen won for the first time. It was the longest game ever played in a world chess championship. Carlsen decided in July 2022 not to defend his championship title in 2023.
Although he stated he was not motivated to defend his title, he would continue playing competitive chess.
Carlsen impressed his trainers with an extraordinary memory; from the beginning of his career, he used to play a large variety of openings. Carlsen Preferred a positional style of play where overall board control is more important than attacking an opponent’s pieces.
Benefits of Playing Chess
Chess has become a common game around the world which has played a significant role in uniting people from different cultures and backgrounds. In this section, you will learn the importance of engaging in this game. Let’s dive deeper!
Chess Enables People to Interact
Chess is one the games that have existed for more than 1,500 years and is one of the oldest games ever. This game developed into the game that is played today due to global dissemination.
The development of chess around the globe has resulted in unity among people from all origins, age groups, and cultural contexts through a common bond and passion for the game.
Chess Educates You How to Win and Lose
Everyone enjoys success, of course, but it’s equally important to develop a positive attitude about failure. As the expression goes, sometimes you teach the lesson, and other times you are the one who receives the task.
Make sure to always try, above all, to improve as a player from those defeats. When you face failure, just like in life, you must learn to get up and return wiser and stronger. Chess can help you develop important character traits like winning with grace.
Playing Chess Encourages Creativity
As it said, a person’s personality emerges during a chess game. An outgoing and social person might be a bold attacker, while a shy and passive person may play more cautiously. The beauty of playing chess is that it allows various personalities and playing styles.
You can express your creativity by creating unique plays, plans, and strategies to use on the board.
Playing Chess Aids in Developing Problem-Solving Techniques
Every chess game presents you with difficulties and puzzles you must solve to play your best.
Playing chess can help you plan, take your time making decisions, and analyze the benefits and drawbacks of various options; this pertains to the daily difficulties you experience. Like chess, you aim to achieve the best outcomes for your life after making the best decisions.
Chess Boosts Confidence
Chess is all about you. You devote time to practicing, participating in competitions, and considering your mistakes to identify your weaknesses. With all of this effort, you will gain confidence.
After putting in the effort, you will gain confidence. In addition, it can help you develop perseverance even if you have to work through a challenging phase where your chess progress is a plateau.
Chess Enables the Brain to Exercise on Both Sides
Chess challenges your brain to reason, build pattern recognition, test your memory, and make visual and intellectual decisions.
Any person can play chess. Therefore, these mental workouts can benefit your brain health for the rest of your life. A healthy brain is active.
Chess Teaches You How to Remain Calm Under Pressure
You will learn to remain composed under pressure after playing a challenging game of chess where you get all your time running out, and you still need to make decisions to prove your point.
You must be quiet and focused on allowing your brain to function at its highest potential. Throughout your life, tests will all be present. You need o to maintain your composure and confidence to play your best, much like in a game of chess.
How Much Do Professional Chess Players Make?
You might probably have a question: How much do chess players make? Well, In the current world, the best chess players make a good living from the game.
Generally, a chess player’s salary is over 100k USD. Experienced players like Fabiano Caruana, who took part in the World Chess Championship, earned $1 million each of the previous two years from winning the Chess.
How to Become a Professional in Chess
Suppose you are a chess player and are wondering how you can become a professional, don’t panic because there is always room for improvement no matter where you are. Learning to play chess can be enjoyable and easy if you have appropriate habits and a positive mindset.
To improve your skills in a chess game, you must study the rules, play lots of fun, review your play, practice puzzles, check the end games, double-check your moves and not waste time on openings. Keep on scrolling to learn more.
Know the Chess Rules
It makes no difference if you are not sure of the game rules or you already know the rules. Reviewing the basic piece movements and chess rules is a good idea unless you are already a serious chess player. You can locate the basics and guidelines.
Practice Lots of Chess Games
Practice makes perfect. Engaging in lots of exercises is important because chess is not different from any other skill that you cannot improve. To become a professional, you will have to play Chess whenever you get an opportunity, whether on your computer, on the go, or at home.
Learn and Review From Your Games
If you are one of those players who play chess without reviewing, you have a long way to go; that is not the best path to improving and becoming a professional. Every game that you participate in offers numerous possibilities and mistakes.
You must gain knowledge from both playing and reviewing to get better! When you use the analysis tool to help get a better understanding of each game you play.
Use Chess Puzzles to Exercise
The chess strategies are tiny, manageable puzzles waiting to be s in the game of chess. The puzzles stimulate the actual game scenarios where you can win. It’s like playing chess while skipping to the testing phase. Try some puzzles available for free.
Do a Research on Basic Endgames
Most chess games last long, but only after many moves and after you exchange the pieces before they are finally over. In many cases, this will only leave kings, a few pieces, or pawns. The “endgame,” where turning one of your pawns into a queen, is typically the objective.
You will win more games if you do your research well and master the endgame. Practice some of the most popular endgame drills to become a good chess player.
Avoid Wasting Time to Memorize the Openings
Most chess players commit the mistake of spending a lot of time memorizing chess moves sequences (the “openings”). The issue is that few players are familiar with various openings, and even those who know have little chance of playing the exact lines.
You can focus on learning the sound opening principles from the beginning instead of worrying about memorizing numerous “book moves” and chess theory.
Check Your Moves Twice
Avoiding incorrect movements is one of the most crucial aspects of improving your chess performance. The majority of players lose due to mistakes. Therefore, before moving one of the pieces, always learn to double-check to ensure that your king will be safe and that you are not giving away any pieces for free before moving one.
How to Make Money Playing Chess
Do you know you can make money just from playing chess if you are a dedicated and passionate player? There are so many ways of making money while playing chess.
In this section, you are going to learn different ways that you can engage in earning a living from chess. Therefore let’s dive deeper.
Playing for Clubs
Playing chess for clubs is one of the first ways to make money. It is a major way pre-elite and grandmasters receive their income after competing for a particular club. The chess grandmaster’s salary usually ranges from $5000 to $20000.
The Appearance Fees
Appearance fees are the second way to make money through playing chess. It is one method that works well for famous and professional chess players, who earn money after appearing and participating in certain events.
Magnus Carlsen and Garry Kasparov, the most famous chess players, made a lot of money after appearing in many events.
Stipends and Scholarships
Scholarship and Stipends are the fourth way to earn money through playing chess. The brilliant students who excel at chess may receive special bursaries. National team players also often receive a higher salary.
Nevertheless, even in Russia, up until now, the official member of the Russian Olympic team has only received a symbolic salary. They do not enjoy any special privileges at all in many other nations.
Through Becoming a Coach
To be a chess coach is the fifth way you can make money from chess games. You don’t need to be a professional chess player to qualify. On the online platform, IMs and GMs charge between around $20 to $50 per hour, and “stars” will get to request more (up to about $100).
Furthermore, there are always exceptions, such as crazy internet marketers from developing nations who prepare to labor for food or fortunate individuals who have discovered a client willing to turn them into millionaires.
Selling Chess Merchandise
Selling chess merchandise is the sixth way of making money from chess. It was particularly popular in the post-Soviet era when individuals traveled the globe with bulky baggage containing expensive chess sets and books to sell at tournaments.
Nowadays, selling chess merchandise appears less dramatic, but it still works well.
Chess Hustling
Becoming a chess hustler is the seventh way of making money through playing chess. When you take a visit to the parks or chess clubs, you can get to see a lot of chess hustlers who make money by beating other guys in blitz or bullet.
Through Organizing Work
Becoming a tournament director or arbitrator is the eighth way of earning from chess. The FIDE published rules for the world rapid & blitz, including information about compensation for referees and officials. Ten people will receive around $30,000. The amount of money the justices make differs from country to country.
Playing in Tournaments
Many competitions offer good prizes, some of which are invitation-only tournaments; this implies that not all players can participate, including grandmasters-only matches. Any of these competition’s top finishers can easily take home 6,000 dollars.
Online Chess Playing
Now that you live in a world of great technology, you can also enjoy playing chess online, but the communities are different. You can play against players from all around the world.
You might have a question if it is safe to play chess online for those unfamiliar with it or for parents concerned about their children playing online. The question may appear absurd to some, but it requires a thoughtful answer and an explanation.
Alternatively, you should calm down if you believe playing online games is risky. Even though it doesn’t seem like cyber-criminals are after you? Sometimes it is necessary to take precautions, as long as you abide by the rules.
However, you should make sure you are fine. The risk of being abducted online is the same as the risk you run when you walk down the street. One of the healthiest online activities is playing safe online chess. For various reasons, most individuals in the neighborhood are friendly and helpful; this means there isn’t much negative conduct.
Chess is a type of peaceful game that promotes politeness and good manners, and it is so hard to encounter a harmful person, unlike other video games, like Dota 2 or Fornite, which tend to be more extreme.
How to Safely Play Chess Online
Real-time security is available through various features and the website’s policies. You are not allowed to publish offensive materials, insult anyone, or do anything else that might harm another player’s well-being or gaming experience.
A report feature also enables you to name and shame users who violate the website’s rules. In this way, if they are flaming, an admin can ban them.
Furthermore, when you come across a troll that annoys you, you have an option to ban users from the game and silence other players, which is very helpful.
However, it is vital to use a name other than your identity and to watch out not to put your sensitive information.
It will depend on what you do online since, as you should always keep in mind, online platforms are not bad, but the evil people make them awful.
If you are uncomfortable, you can easily turn off comments and notifications so that no one bothers you. Playing chess online may be entertaining and a good way to quickly improve the game.
To sum up, to play chess safely online, make it a habit of using antivirus to avoid scams, malware, and malicious data going into your computer and things that you don’t like. Antivirus can be helpful for kids and parents worried about their children’s well-being.
Do You Need to Be a Grandmaster to Make Money?
The response to this question is a no. You don’t have to be a chess grandmaster to earn money. There are other options if you want to play chess to earn cash; they don’t always include being chess experts.
Making videos for platforms like twitch and Youtube is the best way to reward charismatic people with very good money.
Great grandmasters like GM Hikaru Namakura also take full advantage of this factor. This famous grandmaster is an example since he is the most transparent and clear to see. Even so, there is no exact information about this pro chess player’s salary.
Moreover, as you know, the chess streamer with little popularity can manage to make up to around $100000 every year. You can do the calculation because Hikaru is the most popular chess streamer.
If you get this question: How much do chess grandmasters make? The answer is straightforward: a chess grandmaster can earn between $2,000 per month from tournaments, simuls, and presentations.
However, training other players is the activity that most grandmasters specialize in, and they can charge up to about $120 per hour for this service.
Many things can affect their income, and the grandmasters advertise their services. Always remember that no organization or company guarantees the payment at the end of the month.
The grandmaster’s energy, available possibilities, and interpersonal skills determine their salary. A grandmaster in the game of chess may charge around $40 or even around $100 for an hour.
The chess grandmasters provide independent services. Therefore, they are free to set their fees. The situation will change if the world champion chess player can attract the right audience of clients willing to pay around $100 and $500 for training.
It also explains why it is so subjective; as you have learned from this article, chess grandmasters have many methods to earn a living. Additionally, the ability to market one’s expertise and product effectively will determine a grandmaster’s income.
Regulations for Becoming a Chess Grandmaster
The world chess organization FIDE awards the title Grandmaster to chess players. The greatest accomplishment a chess player can achieve, other than winning the world chess championship, is through becoming a Grandmaster.
The other recognized FIDE titles are FIDE Master (FM), Candidates Master (CM), and International Master (IM). The world’s top chess players with a 2,700+ELO-rating or more are frequently referred to as “Super Grandmasters” by chess fans.
The title of a grandmaster in the game of chess is for life. There is also a title for women called Woman Grandmaster, which has fewer qualifications.
However, both genders are eligible for the Grandmaster title. Chess players must usually attain norms in internationally rated tournaments to earn a GM title.
A player must meet the following requirements to receive 1 GM norm:
- The chess participant must compete in the tournament in at least nine games (with some exceptions that you can read in the FIDE Handbook).
- The chess player must compete against at least two opponents from chess federations different from his own. (With a few exclusions the way the FIDE Handbook indicates when you read it.)
- The player’s opponents must have at least 50% of titled players. In addition, out of the opponents, at least three (minimum of three) must be grandmothers.
- The participant’s opponent’s minimum rating is 2,380.
- The players’ performance rating must be at least 2,600 to meet the GM norm.
Are GMs Rich?
Although money may seem attractive, it doesn’t look like it is sufficient to become rich in all world senses. Chess players who work hard constantly look for new chances and use their skills creatively to earn a living each year.
The chess grandmaster’s salaries are not for making one wealthy, but the situation can alter if the difficulty level is high. The best players in the world can win more than $1 million in a single tournament.
The money increases even further if they perform well in the competition, but only for the top 5 chess players in the world. Nevertheless, the top 100 players in the world can potentially earn more than 1 million dollars a year just from playing in tournaments.
You must remember that the grandmasters might do other things to earn extra money, including participating in tournaments and possibly winning them. The majority of chess players also have additional means of income besides competitions. A good example is Hikaru streams, Carlsen’s mobile app, etc.
The Net Worth of Some of the World’s Best Chess Players
Hikaru Nakamura
Hikaru Nakamura is one of the top players in the world because of their incredible performance. It has been a long time since he started streaming on Twitch and Youtube. He has openly said that he has a net worth of $5 million.
Garry Kasparov
Even if Garry Kasparov isn’t the real world champion, he is still a popular chess player. The fact is that he also makes money through his books, academy, and private chess lessons. His net worth ranges from around $10 to $15 million, although it might be much higher.
Magnus Carlsen
For many years now, Magnus Carlsen remains popular as a world chess champion. He also works as a model, promotes various businesses, has a play store app, and advertises different brands. Carlsen’s network, after an estimation, is worth around $20-25 million.
That’s All, Folks
With all the details from this article, you can conclude that playing chess can take you far. All you need is consistency, practice, patience, and proper coaching, and you will be able to learn, play and start earning from playing chess.