The current world chess champion, Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, became the highest paid E-sports player in the world in 2020.
It is reported that the 30-year-old grandmaster’s income for the past year amounted to more than $ 510000.
Lennart Ootes/Wikimedia Commons
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, many chess tournaments were canceled last year. This has led to the fact that leading grandmasters have become actively involved in online tournaments with huge prize money. Two more chess players are included in the Forbes magazine rating “The 25 Biggest E-sports Winners in 2020”: Americans Hikaru Nakamura (7th place, $324,645) and Wesley So (12th place, $246,180). All the grandmasters on the list played on the Chess24 platform.
It is worth mentioning, that second place in the ranking went to the American professional Call of Duty player James Eubanks (Clayster), who earned $ 383,325 last year.