Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen wins first chess competition at Esports World Cup
This is the second time the EWC has been staged and it comes with a total prize pot of around $70m (£50m). Over a period of seven weeks, teams from around the world compete across 25 popular games, including Call of Duty, Street Fighter and League of Legends. The EWC said including chess this year has seen the game reach a "new milestone", 139 years after the first World Chess Champion was crowned.At the Esports world cup, competitors sit at their computer on a stage in front of a live audience, wearing heart-rate monitors. Much like with traditional sport, there are large screens, big name sponsors and commentators. A number of grandmasters took part in the online competition, which saw players go through a group stage before the top-scorers made it to the playoffs. It was the world's best traditional chess player who cinched the title, after beating number eight Alireza Firouzja. Carlsen is no stranger to embracing modernity in the embracing modernity in the game. Last year, said he would return to a major chess competition after the sport's governing body agreed to relax its dress code.Carlsen had quit the World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships in New York, where he was defending his title, when he was told he could not continue playing while wearing jeans."It's been an amazing show, unlike anything that I've seen so far," said Carlsen after lifting the EWC trophy, a gold coloured plate."I really hope that this is a big part of the future for chess. "Maybe we can get on a bigger stage next time," he added as it had proved popular at the tournament.
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The Sun
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- The Sun
Wayne Rooney's son Kai, 15, jumps THREE age groups as he's called up to Man Utd u19s pre-season tour
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
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‘I must document everything': the film about the Palestinian photographer killed by missiles in Gaza
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'We had different points of views: the American, the European, the Egyptian, the Israeli, but never the Palestinian. It started really bothering me, and at some point I couldn't live with it any more.' In spring last year she flew to Cairo with the idea that she could somehow find a way across the Gaza border to film the war firsthand. That quickly proved a naive and futile mission, so she began filming Gazan refugees in Egypt. One of them suggested to Farsi that if she wanted to talk to someone inside, he could put her in touch with his friend Fatma in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City. We first see Hassouna the way Farsi meets her, on her little phone screen, materialising with green hijab, big glasses and her broad white strip of a smile. They clearly delight in each other's presence from the outset. 'From the first call, I felt that she was someone very special, and that something clicked between the two of us immediately,' Farsi says. 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She talks about her family and introduces her shy brothers to Farsi. She has already made herself a photographer and poet by the time they meet, and Farsi coaches her into being a film-maker and to send out video of the ruination around her. Hassouna is supremely, naturally talented. Her pictures capture the everyday effort of her neighbours trying to survive in the rubble, while her use of language – in her poems and in conversation – is every bit as evocative. The film's title is taken from her passing description of what it is like to venture outside: 'Every second you go out in the street, you put your soul on your hands and walk.' In another conversation, struggling to make sense of what is happening, Hassouna asks: 'We live a very simple life, and they want to take this simple life from us. Why? I'm 24 and I don't have any of the things that I want. Because every time you reach what you want, there's a wall. They put up a wall.' The film should not work. It is determinedly rudimentary, filmed largely on one phone pointed at another. The image of Hassouna sometimes freezes and buffers as the internet connection ebbs and flows. But these glitches draw us in and make us experience the precariousness of their connection. 'That's why I decided to keep this low resolution and not to use a regular camera,' Farsi explains. 'I wanted it to be very low-key technically, to match the connection problems with her, to match the disparity of life here and there.' She had originally attempted a cleanly edited version with all the disconnections cut out. 'It was lacking soul. It didn't breathe. So we put it back in – this brokenness of image and sound.' The sweetness of the relationship at the core of the film is made bittersweet by the constant threat of death around Hassouna. Every so often she reports the death of relatives, or neighbours whose eviscerated homes she points to out of her window. 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It's amazingly well planned in order to eliminate somebody who just does photography. 'I still can't believe it,' Farsi says, speaking from Bogotá, where she is touring with the film, which is now Hassouna's legacy. 'It's three months now, a bit more, and it's still quite unbelievable. For me, she is somewhere out there and I believe I will meet her someday.' In their conversations, Hassouna talked about all the places in the world she dreamed of seeing, while insisting she would always return home to Gaza. Shortly before she died, she told Farsi: 'I have the idea that I must keep going and I must document everything, to be part of this story, to be me!' She imagined passing on her experiences to her children, but instead they have been captured for a cinematic audience, and Hassouna's arresting personality has been preserved at the same time, a portrait of a unique individual among the 60,000 dead. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is in UK and Irish cinemas from 22 August. Tickets at
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
British athletes could be allowed to compete in future Islamic Solidarity Games
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