World Chess and It.com Chess Event Wins W3 Award

London, United Kingdom - October 2, 2025 - World Chess Plc (LSE: CHSS) is pleased to announce that "Hans Niemann vs. You", the record-setting chess event produced in partnership with it.com Domains and staged at Web Summit 2024, has been awarded a W3 Award for Web Experiences - Games by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts.

The W3 Awards honour creative excellence on the internet, and the recognition places World Chess's recent project alongside leading names in digital media, product design, and interactive technology.

Award listing: W3 Awards Gallery

About the Project

"Hans Niemann vs. You" was held on 13 November 2024 at the MEO Arena in Lisbon as part of Web Summit, one of the world's largest gatherings of technology and business leaders. The event invited global participants to join forces-alongside an AI advisor-and vote in real time to collectively challenge Grandmaster Hans Niemann in a live match.

Over 106,638 people from 132 countries participated, making it the largest known online simultaneous chess match in history. Players had 30 seconds to vote on each move, choosing from Grandmaster, Advanced, or Amateur suggestions provided by an AI system based on Stockfish. Niemann had five minutes per move to respond. The match, which lasted 71 moves and 42 minutes, was broadcast globally and commentated live by American FIDE Master James Canty III.

Why This Matters

The W3 Award serves as an independent endorsement of the project's technical and creative execution-and a signal that the chess world is successfully extending into adjacent digital sectors.

This was not a novelty match. It was a well-structured digital event, hosted in a high-stakes, high-visibility environment (Web Summit), that met a growing interest in collaborative gameplay and intelligent systems. The project demonstrated that chess, when presented with the right balance of access, design, and format, has relevance far beyond its traditional audience.

"This recognition affirms something we've believed for a long time: chess is evolving," said Ilya Merenzon, CEO of World Chess. "The success of this event-both in participation and in execution-shows that the game has room to grow in the digital public sphere, not just as sport, but as a structured, interactive experience."

Andrey Insarov, CEO of it.com Domains, added: "Our goal was to create something that invited participation at scale without sacrificing depth. This award reflects the care we took in designing that experience-and what's possible when tradition and technology meet with intent."

A New Model for Digital Chess Events

Where previous mass chess matches-such as Garry Kasparov's "Kasparov vs. the World" (1999)-were important proofs of concept, "Hans Niemann vs. You" operated in a more mature digital environment. It employed live infrastructure, AI-supported choices, and platform-native design to deliver a game that was both strategic and spectator-friendly.

The W3 Award, judged by senior figures across digital and creative industries, recognises this balance of audience engagement and design discipline. It also places chess-typically treated as a cultural or educational domain-within the broader landscape of interactive, scalable digital experiences.

About it.com Domains

it.com Domains is a London-headquartered domain registry operating the it.com domain extension (e.g., yourbrand.it.com). The company is also a candidate Registry Services Provider for ICANN's upcoming gTLD rounds. Known for its inventive marketing partnerships, it.com Domains focuses on creating accessible and creative identity solutions for businesses and individuals worldwide.