Checkmating on the Net

Probably the quietest sport, chess has given India all the reason to shout about. We have a world champion, Viswanathan Anand.

This sure must have inspired some of us to go back to the chequered board. After all, if in the cricket season everyone takes to three sticks, even if in the middle of a road, why not chess; moreover, it’s all in black and white and not mud coloured as in the game of white clothes. The Net has a plethora of content for the chess buff, or even the novice for that matter. Beginning with learning, you can read up on all the chess news, have discussions on the mind sport, debate on the famous games played, and, the best of all, actually play it online at all levels. You’ll even come across online tournaments.


While a simple search at msn.com would conveniently lead you to several relevant sites, the foremost would be it’s own rather-interactive http://zone.msn.com/chess/. You can chat, get news, download or shop stuff, even "get started" if need be. But the USP is the number of ‘gaming rooms’. Players of different levels can meet each other in separate categories, and test themselves. So no more looking for an idle friend to sit on that board—you can have real, human opponents on a virtual board. All you do is register yourself at the site with minimal information being asked for. Enter a game room, ‘sit’ on a board and wait for a player to come along. There could be upward of 400 players on the site at any given time, so the wait is not really long. Then for the ‘Anand-inspired,’ there are the tournament rooms. All these games are played using a small software that is downloaded from the site itself and installed automatically — no cause for non-geeks to worry. This site is free.

While most of us can slide a few pieces across the board as if trying to dodge rickshaws in a crowded Indian market, not many would know the difference between Queen’s English and Queen’s Pawn Openings. To learn about that you can go to www.princeton.edu/~jedwards/cif/chess.html, a site that can teach you basic as well advanced strategies for all pieces.

Then there is the Internet Chess Club at www.chessclub.com. A good site, but this is a paid site — $ 49 per annum — and, thus, may not be suitable for Indians without credit cards.

The organisation whose championship our boy won, the World Chess Federation, can be accessed at www.fide.com. You can view the famous games played, get news and other information on chess, see photos of events, or get a calendar of chess happenings scheduled.

Chess is a game with a rich history, in which India is believed to have the role of the place of birth. To learn more on this and the variants of the game, you check out www.chessvariants.com. You will find a description of Chaturanga, the oldest known form of chess, played in India in or before the 7th century after Christ.

While we are at it, you can may also like refresh your memory of how Deep Blue, the famous IBM computer, beat Garry Kasparov, in a six-game rematch in May 1997. You can do that at www.research.ibm.com/ deepblue/home/html/b.html. There are commentaries on the match by experts, including Viswanathan, as well as the technologies involved in the whole affair.

By the time you have taken a peek at these sites, you would surely sound like a heavyweight, if not play like one. Also, in the process you would come across a whole lot of other interesting links — sites on the game are by the thousand.

Category: Chess , Reviews