Descout
Back to Guides
Guide··6 min read

Anichess Season 10's Masters League: How the Eight-Seat Qualification Works

Four of the Masters League's eight seats turn over each Anichess season: the top two on the Standard ladder and the top two from a capped 64-player Seasonal Playoffs take them.

Drafted by the Descout article deskHow this was made
Share:
Anichess Season 10's Masters League: How the Eight-Seat Qualification Works - Tutorial and guide

Anichess said on September 17 that Season 10, "Ascension," was almost here, with a 300,000 $CHECK prize pool and a new eight-player Masters League. Four of its eight seats change hands every season, and a player earns one by finishing in the top two on the Standard ladder or in the top two of the Seasonal Playoffs, according to Anichess's full Season 10 breakdown, published September 8. The underlying game is the same chess-with-spells format as Season 9; our guide to Anichess's mechanics covers how spells, Kingslay and the $CHECK/M8 economy work.

How the Masters League works

The Masters League is an eight-player round robin played every season for 100,000 $CHECK, per Anichess's breakdown. Anichess's September 23 post described the format as best-of-five matches.

Anichess's live Masters League page shows the current format. The group stage is a round robin of 28 best-of-five matches, and the top four advance to a best-of-five playoff: an eliminator on November 7 (third place against fourth), a semifinal on November 8 and the grand final on November 14, each at 14:00 UTC. The 100,000 $CHECK is paid by final placement: 30,000 for first, then 20,000, 14,000, 10,000, 8,000, 7,000, 6,000 and 5,000 for eighth. The eight players listed are Ra1zen, daniliko19, Ellaijio, Seagull12, Marka, T3lbatz, PON and Dreams.

At the end of a season the top four in the league keep their places and the bottom four are replaced by the top two on the Standard ladder and the top two from the Seasonal Playoffs, according to Anichess. If a player drops out of the league, Anichess says, they cannot come straight back in the same season, even by finishing top two on the ladder or in the playoffs. They sit out one league season, then the road opens again. Every player who sits in the league also qualifies for a yearly championship between the Masters, per the same breakdown. Anichess confirmed the four-seat rotation on September 29.

There was no league before Season 10, so the first eight were seeded from existing results, per Anichess: the top two from the Road to Magnus Cup (the FAQ names Ellaijio and Dreams), the top three from the Season 5 to 7 playoffs, and the top three from the Season 9 playoffs. Road to Magnus was the bracket that put a community player across the board from Magnus Carlsen after opening qualification to all players.

Qualifying for a seat

Anichess describes two roads to a Masters League seat, and a player can work on both at once (Anichess):

  1. Play the Standard ladder. Finishing first or second on the Standard ladder by rating sends a player to the league and skips the playoffs entirely. Anichess's post says a player is on it from their first Standard game. Ratings reset when the season opens and, per Anichess, this is the last reset; after Season 10, ratings carry from season to season.
  2. Reach the Seasonal Playoffs. The playoffs are a 64-player field, and a player needs only one of five routes into it, per Anichess: a top-24 finish on the Standard ladder by rating; a top-24 finish by seasonal points; one of 5 places for streamers; one of 5 places for titled chess players, by invitation; or one of 6 places from events through the season, including 2 from the Gambit Series. The ladder and seasonal points are separate lists, so either can qualify a player without the other.
  3. Finish in the playoffs' top two. The top two finishers of the Seasonal Playoffs take the other two rotating seats.

Anichess's September 29 post calls the road to the rotating seats "the Seasonal Playoffs, open to anyone who plays." Read against the breakdown, that means anyone can try to qualify through the five published routes above; the field itself is capped at 64, so the playoffs are not an open-entry bracket.

Earning playoff points

Two weekly events, Spellbound and SpellStorm, are the season's Playoff Qualifiers, and Anichess says they are the only events that earn Playoff Points (Anichess). They play like Standard: in Spellbound a player picks their spells, and in SpellStorm the spells are random. Both count toward rating, with win streaks on.

Each Playoff Qualifier pays points to its top 30 finishers, per Anichess:

  • 1st: 100 points; 2nd: 80; 3rd: 60; 4th: 50; 5th: 45
  • 6th to 10th: 35; 11th to 15th: 30; 16th to 20th: 25
  • 21st to 25th: 20; 26th to 30th: 15

A player who finishes an event after playing seven or more games gets 20 bonus points on top, whether they win, lose or draw those games, and the bonus goes to every finisher including 31st and below. Anichess's FAQ also says Standard games earn 5 points for a win and 1 for a draw.

The Gambit Series costs $CHECK to play. It runs for four weeks, each round open for the whole week, with a buy-in of $CHECK per match, a winner-takes-the-pot payout and an 8% fee on buy-ins; the two players with the most points across all four rounds take playoff places, per Anichess. The FAQ says a player can reach the playoffs without spending $CHECK, because the ladder is free and fills 24 places while Standard games and free events earn seasonal points toward another 24.

The rest of the season

Anichess lists events for every week of the season (Anichess):

  • Relic Rush plays for cosmetics: a win scores 3 points, a draw 2 and a loss 1, and 5, 12 and 20 points unlock a background, a chessboard with pieces, and the full set.
  • Mirror Mode runs on Wednesdays, with both players given the same one or three spells from sets top players use.
  • Spell Playground runs on Mondays for casual play, with no rewards, rating or win-streak bonus.

On timing, Season 10 is under way, and Anichess's events page is the schedule. Gambit Series Round 2 runs October 3 to 9, Round 3 opens October 10 and Round 4 opens October 17. The Masters League group stage is under way, with the Round 1 deadline at October 8, 14:00 UTC. The September 8 post's own advice is to be on both the ladder and the seasonal points list, to play seven or more games in each event, and to pre-register for events.

The numbers, as published

Season 10's 300,000 $CHECK prize pool, which Anichess's September 17 post announced, splits 100,000 for the Seasonal Playoffs, 100,000 for the Masters League and 100,000 across the season's events, per Anichess's breakdown.

$CHECK is Anichess's "Strategy Token for the Checkmate Ecosystem," with a fixed supply of 1,000,000,000 tokens, per Anichess's own documentation, spendable on tournament entry and stakeable for M8, the game's separate non-transferable points layer.

Sources

Share: