How much money do the top players make?
This is something of a mystery because the pros don’t like to talk about their paydays, and tournament organizers hand out appearance fees that often dwarf the prizes.
When Magnus Carlsen won the London Chess Classic this month, all the talk was about a different number: Carlsen now has the highest-ever recorded rating, 2862, which broke Garry Kasparov’s peak of 2851.
But there was hardly a word about the $80,000-plus that the 22-year-old Norwegian, reputedly a millionaire, earned by taking first prize.
One of the more bizarre international tournament prizes ever is being offered at a four-GM speed tournament at Moscow’s Central Chess Club on Saturday. The winner will get about 1,000 square yards of land in the gated, vacation village of Pitirenka, outside the Russian capital.
Its value, according to one estimate, is half-a-million rubles — or about $16,000.
But the biggest chessrelated payout recently was the $800,000 that a British collector paid at auction for an amber board that the avid amateur King Charles I played on.
Charles took two possessions to the scaffold when he was executed in 1649 — a Bible and that board.