The Best Chess Betting Sites for 2024

Candidates Tournament

The Candidates Tournament is held during each World Championship cycle in order to choose the player who will challenge the current champion. Players can qualify in various ways, but the format typically involves eight grandmasters competing in a double round-robin competition. In the end, the winner moves on to the World Chess Championship.

World Chess Championship

The World Chess Championship is held in a match format between just two players: the current World Champion and a designated challenger. While the length of these matches has changed over the years, current rules call for a 14-game match, with players alternating playing with the white and black pieces. If the match is tied after regulation, the competition moves to faster-paced rapid – and potentially the even faster blitz – tiebreaker games to determine a winner.

Norway Chess

Norway Chess is an elite invitational tournament in Stavanger, Norway, which has been held annually since 2013. In most years, the event features both blitz and classic tournaments. Magnus Carlsen has won the classical and blitz tournaments three times each, more than any other player in each format.

Chess 9LX

The Chess 9LX tournament brings a variety of the world’s top players to the Saint Louis Chess Club each year to compete in a Chess 960 event. Chess 960, also known as Fischer Random Chess, is a variant in which each player’s back row pieces are randomly assigned (within certain rules) to determine the starting position of each game. This version of chess gets its name from the fact that there are 960 possible starting positions.

Learn the Basics of Chess

We don’t expect you to become a grandmaster overnight, but it might help to learn a little bit about chess if you want to get the most out of betting on it. Even if you already know how the pieces move, knowing just a bit more can go a long way when you bet on chess online.

For instance, it helps to understand exactly how games end. There are many ways a game can end in a draw, and top players usually resign well before a checkmate is reached. This can help you make better determinations when it comes to the number of moves markets found on many chess betting sites.

Learn About Top Players

Just as in any sport, it helps to get very familiar with the best players before you bet on them. Knowing the relative strength of elite (and not so elite) grandmasters is a great start, but there’s much more you can learn to help with your handicapping.

For instance, some players draw a much larger percentage of their games than others, or play better than expected with either White or Black. Relationships matter, too: some rials will go all out for wins at any cost against each other, while friends may be likely to agree to draws unless one absolutely needs a win due to the tournament situation.

Understand Event Formats

On that note, it’s important to have a basic understanding of how chess tournaments work and what that means for the players in any given game or match. At different points, it may be obvious that players will try hard to go for a win or be willing to quickly accept a draw, and you’ll want to consider that when making your bets.

For instance, if a tournament has a round-robin that qualifies players for a knockout stage, two leaders may happily draw in a late round, knowing that’s enough to guarantee they go through. This can also impact other markets: if players are looking to draw, they will likely do so quickly, meaning the number of moves could be very low.

Judging Player Form

It pays to keep an eye on major chess websites in order to see how each player in a tournament has been playing as of late. You might even want to look into top magazines like New In Chess to get expert opinions on what’s going on in among top grandmasters. As in most sports, form matters when you’re considering chess betting odds.

In chess, however, form means more than just current results. Players may be holding back opening preparation if they have a more important event coming up, such as the Candidates Tournament or a World Championship match. In addition, a player who is struggling might not actually lose all that many games: they might instead play super cautiously, preventing themselves from winning much but also securing a high percentage of draws.

Look for Miscellaneous Factors

When it comes to live chess tournaments, there are a few off-the-board factors you might want to consider before betting. Players travel around the world, and those coming from Europe to the United States might struggle for a day or two before getting acclimated during a tournament. Players who have had to play multiple long games defending difficult positions without a rest day might succumb to fatigue or stress.

Online tournaments come with their own caveats. Since players typically compete from home, some might be doing so at very unfavourable hours, which can lead to poor play. And while connectivity issues can’t be predicted, some players and regions deal with them more than others – and that should be factored into your handicapping, especially for outright betting markets.

Alexander Alekhine v Max Euwe (1935)

This may be the most famous World Chess Championship upset of all time. Alekhine came into the match as the defending champion and a heavy favourite over Euwe, a relatively lightly regarded Dutch player who few gave a chance of winning the title. But Euwe was clearly one of the world’s top players, and enjoyed a 7-7 score against Alekhine in the decade leading up to the match.

In the early going, Alekhine dominated, leading by three games at one point. But Euwe rebounded for a 15.5-14.5 win to become World Champion. While some have attributed this to Alekhina’s alcoholism, the consensus of later grandmasters and World Champions is that Euwe simply outplayed the Russian.

Garry Kasparov v Joel Lautier (1995)

Perhaps in honour of the former World Champion, French grandmaster Joel Lautier sprung a tremendous upset at the 1995 Euwe Memorial Tournament. He did so against none other than one of Euwe’s successors: the legendary Garry Kasparov, who was at the height of his powers in the mid-1990s.

Lautier not only came in rated 150 points lower than Kasparov, but also took the black pieces. Yet on this day, Lautier blew perhaps the greatest player of all time off the board in a Paulsen Sicilian, forcing the World Champion to resign in just 31 moves.

Magnus Carlsen v Alireza Firouzja (2020)

Magnus Carlsen has been one of the most dominant World Chess Champions of all times, having held not only the traditional championship but also the Rapid and Blitz crowns as well. Yet that wasn’t enough to save him against 16-year-old prodigy Alireza Firouzja in the online Banter Blitz Cup.

Carlsen only outrated Firouzja by about 136 points heading into the match, meaning a single loss wouldn’t be all that notable. But over a 16-game match, Carlsen came in as a massive favourite. Yet the match went back and forth and stood even heading into the final game, when Firouzja scored a massive win to take the tournament final by an 8.5-7.5 score.