Chess For Charity: Chess for West Bengal, India

The chess for West Bengal charity will take place on Chess.com from June 4-7, 2020. This charity is organized to support the people affected by the Cyclone Amphan that devastated India's largest state on the east coast, West Bengal. This event will be hosted by Samay Raina, a leading Indian stand-up comedian and an avid chess lover. The event will be streamed live on Raina's YouTube channel and also on Chess.com/tv. All donations made during the stream will be sent to the charity to help people in West Bengal.

Register for the tournament here! After registering, you will be directed to the charity tournament club through which the tournament will take place.

Indian users can register here using multiple payment options.

The event is open to everyone around the world and not just for Indians. It will run over four days and players will be required to make a minimum donation of $1.50 (approx. INR 110) during the registration process to take part in the event. Users can help by donating more! The maximum donation is $100. Users and viewers can contribute more via the live stream as well.

Event details:

The event is open for everyone to join and not just Indians. It will be held over four days. Each day will have a new three-hour arena for that particular rating class. Know more about an arena event here. The top four finishers of every arena event will be invited to a knock-out bracket. On each day, the entire knockout and some part of the arena will be live-streamed by Samay Raina alongside several guest stars that include top grandmasters and other celebrity streamers and comedians.
The winners will be rewarded with diamond memberships after a Fair Play check. The time control for all the arenas will be 10 minutes per player with no increment (10+0). 

Event Schedule: (Starts at 5:30 p.m. IST, 5 a.m. PST, 8 a.m. EST, 2 p.m. CET)

• June 4 ~ rating class (zero to 800)
• June 5 ~ rating class (zero to 1400)
• June 6 ~ rating class (zero to 1800)
• June 7 ~ open to everyone!

Daily prizes:

• 1st - one-year diamond membership
• 2nd - nine-month diamond membership
• 3rd - six-month diamond membership
• 4th - three-month diamond membership

This charity is jointly organized by Chess.com and Samay Raina. Raina is one of India's leading stand-up comedians and an ardent chess lover. He has already hosted several charities on his YouTube channel and raised more than INR 20 lakhs (Approx $26,000).

He has had several Indian celebrities on his charity streams including five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand, Yuzvendra Chahal, Tanmay Bhat, Raftaar, Biswa Kalyan Rath and more. He has also actively collaborated with top chess players like Anish Giri, Vidit Gujrathi, Adhiban Baskaran, and Nihal Sarin to play fun variants on stream.

This will be Chess.com's second India-specific charity event after the PM Cares charity event last month.