Chess surge amid lockdown

Jupinderjit Singh
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, April 14

Eleven-year-old Precious Bansal, a promising chess player from the city, had been sharpening her skills for the last few months in preparation for a number of tournaments scheduled from March onward, after her exams got over.

35 

As per chess.com, the number of players who registered online shot up to a phenomenal 35 million last month

Gurjeet Singh, a chess coach and player from Ropar, was also awaiting “over the board” (OTB) tournaments for much-needed exposure before participating in the World Amateur Chess Championship later in the year.

The plans of these two, and innumerable others like them, have been ruined by the spread of the deadly coronavirus, which caused the listed events to be cancelled. At the top level, the high-intensity Candidates Tournament among the top-8 players in the world, to select the challenger to the reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen, had to be halted midway in Russia due to the virus.

$250,000

Is the prize money for an eight-player event to be organised by Magnus Carlsen — the biggest cash tournament online. The invitational meet will be played from April 18 to May 3

Many other sports events, including the Indian Premier League, have faced the same fate. But chess has one advantage over others — it can be played online, sitting at home during the lockdown in the time of coronavirus, against a real player sitting anywhere in the world. With the OTB tournaments becoming impossible, online tournaments have become a rage. None other than Carlsen has announced the biggest cash tournament online — a $250,000 event for eight elite players. The Magnus Carlsen Invitational will be played from April 18 to May 3 with shorter time controls.

Heavy rush

Chess.com and lichess.org, two popular chess websites, have witnessed a heavy rush of online players. As per the data posted by chess.com on Saturday, the number of registered players shot up to a phenomenal 35 million last month, the highest spike in registrations coming in the last few months. The site’s CEO in an email to the employees said, “Since the launch of chess.com in May of 2007, the site had a pretty steady growth pattern each year where traffic increases, then flattens out during summer for USA/Europe, before growing again. We’ve grown from 20-50 percent every year since starting out 13 years ago. This month, everything changed. Basically, we are now expecting that our next 10 years of growth could happen in the next three months.”

The rise is more than double in the Indian context. Erik, founder of chess.com, has analysed the user data and reported a spike of users in India. “Usually, the highest average was of about 1,000 players from India joining this site daily. Now it is over 8,000 every day in March.”

Collaboration

At the regional level, new ways and methods are being adopted to give the players much-needed tournament practice and study programmes. Clubs in Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Dehradun, Lucknow, Jaipur, Udaipur and other places have switched to daily online tournaments instead of Sunday chess meet events or once-a-month OTB games. The Chandigarh Shatranj Parents association, which used to organise practice tournaments and cash award tournaments almost every month, switched to the online platform immediately.

“The end of March is a boom time for tournaments in the city as well as in other parts of the country as exams are over,” said Gaurav Bansal, who administers the group. “We had planned two events but they had to be cancelled. But to keep kids sharp with tournament experience, we are holding online tournaments.”

Chess sans borders

Recently, the group paired with a chess group from Pune and formed an All India Chess circle group to organise tournaments in different time slots daily.

Chess coach Mohd. Ibrahim from Mohali has paired with chess clubs in Puducherry and is organising cash prize tournaments. The Chess Club Black and White from Lucknow, run by Dr Junaid Ahmed, is holding practice tournaments with Naveen Karthikeyan of Anna Nagar Chess Academy, Chennai. They are also organising video-linked classes after the tournaments to analyse the games. Exciting matches are being held between Chennai stars, Lucknow Nawabs, Chandigarh Champions and Punjab de Sher.

“Chess seems to have benefited the most from the present lockdown. Players of all ages have more time to look at their games and play. As a coach, I have had more students call in with serious class schedules than ever before,” said Dr Junaid Ahmed.