$50,000 Donated To Charity As King Clan Wins Chess Clash
Who knew that the light-hearted Chess Clash event would almost bring the downfall of Chess.com? After CCO Danny Rensch irresponsibly bet the company's ownership on clan Barbarian's win, clan King emerged with a victory, giving Ludwig the right to run Chess.com.
Fortunately, Ludwig took the high road and refused to take over the website, making only a few small requests in return:
The event featured 16 players divided into two clans (King and Barbarian) of four duos, each with a chess and a Clash creator. Clans competed in a set of three chess challenges and three Clash challenges, followed by a Clash of Clans Finale. Clans earned two extra minutes to play the Finale for each challenge they won.
How to watch Chess Clash
You can find all the action of Chess Clash here as part of our live events platform.
Live commentary provided by Ludwig, IM Danny Rensch, and Clash With Eric.
- Challenge 1: Chess
- Challenge 2: Clash of Clans
- Challenge 3: Clash Royale
- Challenge 4: Chess
- Challenge 5: Clash Royale
- Challenge 6: Chess
- Finale: Clash of Clans
Challenge 1: Chess
A lot of ups and downs defined the first challenge of the day. Clash creator Cristinini impressed fans and commentators alike when she quickly found overwhelming tactics to win her game for the Kings. Sadly, her clan mate Sapnap soon found a Botez Gambit to equalize the score:
With Clash With Ash losing his game against Xokas, it was up to SirTagCR to tie the score with the help of GM Aman Hambleton. SirTag's job looked easy when he took his opponent's last piece and still had a rook on the board, but this is an amateur event— we all know it's not really an amateur event unless there's at least one stalemate, right?
With that magnificent throw, the Kings won the first challenge with a 2.5-1.5 score, winning an extra two minutes for the Finale.
Challenge 2: Clash of Clans
Two things became abundantly clear as the second challenge started. The first is that Clash of Clans is an extremely complex game. The second is that chess skills do not transfer to other strategy games at all, as Clash specialist Clash With Eric's comments revealed.
Ironically, grandmaster Aman went to battle without training an army, which is the equivalent of playing a chess game without developing the pieces. That was not a good sign for clan Barbarian.
Aman further complicated matters for his clans by only getting one star on his second attack. However, Rey Enigma, from clan King, somehow took things a step further and didn't win a single star after both of his tries.
Sadly for clan Barbarian (and Danny), Kevin Bordi also underperformed with only four stars. Clan King finished the second challenge with another win and two more minutes on their clock for the Finale.
Challenge 3: Clash Royale
The third challenge began with a thrilling battle where OJ and Wirtual defeated Clash With Ash and Anna Cramling. The game came down to the wire after OJ launched a massive attack against his opponent's King Tower—a risky strategy that paid off.
Paired with SirTag, Aman took his opportunity to redeem himself. Their duo was the only one to pull a 4-0 victory, destroying all enemy towers without losing any of theirs.
The challenge eventually ended in a draw, giving each team one extra minute for the Finale.
Challenge 4: Chess
With many Puzzle Rush addicts in their clan, the Barbarians were the clear favorite to win the fourth challenge. Still, it was King's Levy Rozman who stole the spotlight. Levy pulled off an impressive 47-point run, not only the highest among all participants but also the highest of his life:
That was not enough to give the Kings the win, though. Clan Barbarian won the challenge, bringing down the King's time advantage in the Finale to only two minutes.
Challenge 5: Clash Royale
The fifth challenge was another close one, with most matches ending in 1-1 ties. To Danny's (momentary) relief, the Barbarians eventually won, thanks to the efforts of Kevin Bordi and Domingo, the only duo to win 2-0.
The challenge win allowed the Barbarians to catch up on the Finale clock.
Challenge 6: Chess
And then, it was time for Spell Chess. The wild variant lived up to its promise, with creators playing some of the craziest games of the entire event.
And while jumping and freezing spells are always fun to watch, there's nothing quite like witnessing the magic of a dirty flag.
Aman and Anna Cramling did the heavy lifting for the Barbarians, winning 4-0, as did Cristinini and OJ for the Kings. King's Rey Enigma beat Alexandra Botez 3-1, a score repeated by Barbarian's Domingo against Sapnap. Levy and Kevin tied 2-2, just like Clash With Ash and Xokas.
Yes, despite all the craziness, the challenge ended in a tie. Both teams got one more minute for the Finale, leveling the playing field—or so we thought.
Finale: Clash of Clans
With both clans having the same exact amount of time on their clock, the Finale should've been a fair fight. But tragedy struck the Barbarians when Aman once more decided to go to battle without an army:
The grandmaster eventually got a hold of the situation and even played well, conducting multiple three-star attacks. However, it was already too late. The King's players played Clash of Clans slightly better than their counterparts, finishing the Finale with a whopping 31-star advantage to win the event.
Donations And Prizes
Chess.com and Supercell donated $50,000 to the Healthy Gamer Foundation thanks to the clans' 243 earned stars during the Finale.
For their event victory, each King clan member also won five Royal Passes on Clash of Clans and Clash Royale, €100 worth of gems, and Chess.com bots in their likeness (active until the beginning of November).
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Pedro Pinhata is the Writing Lead for Chess.com. He writes articles, feature announcements, event pages, and more. He has been playing chess since 2019 and lives in Brazil.
