Toronto Candidates - Sponsors

Given all the visa trouble we saw in the previous post, Toronto Candidates - Visas (March 2024), you might well ask, 'Why was Toronto Canada chosen to host the event?'. The answer to the question starts with Partners (candidates2024.fide.com), where we find,

The Scheinberg Family • The Scheinberg family is a long-term partner of the International Chess Federation. The cooperation that started a few years ago has already resulted in three Grand Swiss events (2019, 2021 and 2023), two editions oa [sic; 'of'?] Women Grand Swiss (2021 and 2023), and the FIDE Candidates (2022). Supporting the FIDE Candidates Tournament 2024 and the FIDE Women’s Candidates Tournament 2024 in Toronto, Canada is another step to help the top-level chess as well as to promote the game on all the continents.

Other partners mentioned on the page are 1 Hotel Toronto, Chessable, and The Chess Federation of Canada. Here are some recent announcements by FIDE referring to the Scheinbergs:-

• 2021-12-28: Candidates Tournament to take place in Madrid sponsored by Chess.com (fide.com) • 'As the organising sponsor of this prestigious tournament, Chess.com signed an agreement on Monday with governing body FIDE and the Scheinberg family, patrons of the event.'
• 2022-04-19: FIDE announces long-term cooperation with the Scheinberg family (ditto; 'Photo credit: Pokerstars')
• 2023-03-27: Toronto will host the 2024 FIDE Candidates Tournaments (ditto) • 'The event will be sponsored by the Scheinberg family, as part of the long-term collaboration agreement that was announced in 2022.'

Despite the six previous events, the Scheinbergs have received only one mention on this blog: 2023 Grand Swiss, Isle of Man (November 2023). This says as much about their desire for privacy as it does about my journalistic skills. That one blog mention said, 'For the Scheinberg family, see the FIDE news item dated 2022-04-19 in the following list' [also above]. It turns out that there are three generations of the Scheinberg family with a keen interest in chess. All links are to Wikipedia:-

• Matafia Seinbergas (wikipedia.org) • 'Matafia Seinbergas (also Matafia Sembergas or Matafia Scheinberg; 17 November 1909 — 11 September 2002) was a Lithuanian chess player, medical scientist (immunologist, microbiologist, virologist), and the father of Isai Scheinberg, founder of PokerStars.'
• Isai Scheinberg (ditto) • 'Isai Scheinberg (born 1946 or 1947) is the Lithuanian Jewish founder of the PokerStars online poker site. Scheinberg previously had been a senior programmer for IBM Canada.'
• Mark Scheinberg (ditto) • '(Igal) Mark Scheinberg (born 1973) is an Israeli-Canadian businessman and investor with investments in various sectors including real estate and luxury hospitality. He is the co-founder and former co-owner of the online gambling company PokerStars, which was sold in 2014 to Amaya Gaming for $4.9 billion.'

I doubt that anyone has become fabulously wealthy working as a 'senior programmer for IBM Canada', but the 'online gambling company PokerStars' offers a clue. Here are two sources, the first American and the second Canadian:-

• 2020-01-24 The Incredible Rise Of PokerStars Cofounder Isai Scheinberg -- And His Surrender To Federal Agents (forbes.com) • 'Last Friday, Isai Scheinberg, the 73-year-old cofounder of PokerStars, the world’s biggest online poker company, boarded a plane in Switzerland for the nine-hour flight to New York City. On the other end, he would not be greeted at the airport by family members or businesses associates, but by federal agents who would take him into custody.'
• 2023-11-23: How a Canadian billionaire made a fortune from illegal gaming and avoided prison (ricochet.media; 'The Israeli-Canadian founder of PokerStars used his vast wealth and powerful connections to cut deals') • 'He is arguably one of Canada’s wealthiest and most successful business people that the country knows virtually nothing about. But Isai Scheinberg is okay with that. [...] In 2016, the Scheinbergs bought a substantial stake in Chess.com, the largest online chess platform in the world. [...] The Scheinbergs decided to end their investment in 2020.'

Here's the full story given from the poker perspective:-

• 2021-04-15: Isai Scheinberg: His Company, His Legacy, and How Black Friday Impacted Both (pokerstake.com) • 'Ten years after poker’s most infamous day, Black Friday, threatened to destroy the company he and his son Mark built, Scheinberg is ready to let the poker world hear from him for the first time.'

To understand that story, it helps to understand Black Friday. We're not talking the day after Turkey Day (aka Thanksgiving) here: United States v. Scheinberg (wikipedia.org). It starts,

United States v. Scheinberg (2011) is a United States federal criminal case against the founders of the three largest online poker companies, PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Cereus (Absolute Poker/Ultimatebet), and a handful of their associates, which alleges that the defendants violated the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) and engaged in bank fraud and money laundering to process transfers to and from their customers.

In the mid-2000s, I remember watching poker for the first time on television. It was at a bar run by a Brussels tennis club and it was riveting. Is there a connection between the success of online poker and the success of online chess? I bet that the management of Chess.com thinks so and that is has something to do with the Scheinbergs.