Your home is your Castle

Over the months during which I have been writing my new weekly chess column for TheArticle, I have tried to separate the game of chess from its abstruse theory, complicated variations and analysis of mind-boggling chessboard encounters. The links are there for those who wish to investigate grandmaster games more closely, but anyone familiar with my contributions so far will probably have understood that my chief aim has been to connect chess with culture, art and social trends. Indeed, one of my firm beliefs is that chess can act as a kind of weathervane or mirror, not only reflecting developments in the outside world, but also predictive of wider social developments to come.

On April 11 in my column The Game of War, I published some statistics concerning one of the world’s most popular online chess services: www.chess.com. This site offers chess tuition, live coverage of important tournaments, archives of outstanding games from the past and, of course, the facility to compete against human or computer opponents around the world, at any time of the day or night, whenever and wherever you are. According to some YouGov statistics of a couple of years ago, globally there were 600 million chess enthusiasts — a figure that was much denigrated by a handful of doubting Thomases. 

At the time of my writing The Game of War ,  chess.com   could proudly boast that they had some 30 million members and that an astonishing 4,453,868 games had been played online, on their site alone, during the day I checked. On Wednesday April 23, just twelve days later, I returned for an update. Membership had risen to 36,092,133, while the total of games played during the past twenty four hours had increased to 4,850,067. If one site can attract such numbers, it does not demand a huge leap of faith to accept that old   figure of 600 million chess enthusiasts around the planet. Indeed,   chess.com   reported that during March alone of this year, their subscriber base had increased by a quantity that would normally have taken them ten years to achieve.  

It is evident that this bonanza has been driven by the multiple national lockdowns caused by the Coronavirus. As entire populations retreat into the fortresses of their own homes and pull up the drawbridges behind them, it has become apparent that chess, as a challenging and stimulating mental exercise, is the ideal activity for isolated individuals and families to fill their newly discovered spare time. Photos now appear regularly on social media of grandparents playing chess against their grand-offspring, the English Chess Federation in conjunction with the charity Chess in Schools and Communities has launched an ambitious online programme to attract a million school kids to take up chess, and the ease with which chess can now be played online accounts for the massive surge in membership for   chess.com   — which is, in fact, just one chess site among many.  

The most indicative chess trend, with reverberations for the world at large, is that major chess events are now moving rapidly online, and may well stay there. The games between grandmasters and champions remain just as exciting and instantly accessible as physical events. Expert live and online commentary is readily available. Why spend money on hotels, travel, meals and an expensive playing venue, when all such costs can be spared and funds poured instead into the prize purse? Online chess is a win-win situation for both organisers and competitors. This trend is visibly spreading to other mind sports. The World Mind Mapping, Speed Reading and Memory Championships, all dreamt up by the fertile brain of the late Tony Buzan, are now considering an online move, after Covid-19 made physical events, with their large international gatherings, problematic for the remainder of this year.  

Meanwhile, one of the strongest chess tournaments ever held is currently being played online, with a prize fund of a quarter of a million dollars and a stellar complement of grandmasters. Amongst them are World Champion Magnus Carlsen, his former challenger from London 2018, Fabiano Caruana, and the ex-Iranian teenage prodigy Alireza Firouzja, who has now defected to France.   In the days immediately prior to this mighty clash of chessboard arms, Alireza had twice defeated the World Champion in extended superfast online jousts, both of which attracted world headlines. Carlsen, therefore, must have been relieved to gain his revenge in the current online tournament, which   finishes on May 3.

Starting two days later, the World Chess Federation (F é d ération Internationale des É checs , or Fidé ) has announced the Online Nations Cup, an event for elite teams from Russia, the US, Europe, China and India , plus a Rest of the World squad. Two former World Champions are acting as officials. Garry Kasparov will captain the European side, while Vladimir Kramnik will captain India. The Cup is sponsored by none other than   chess.com   with a prize pot of $180,000. It is an ambitious undertaking.  

Fidé states:

“ In order to guarantee fair play in an entirely online event, during their games, players will be observed by Fidé-affiliated international arbiters via a video conference call.   To ensure that the participants don’t receive any kind of external help from a computer, their webcam, computer screen and the room in which they are playing will be under supervision.  

“ The tournament will be broadcast live across multiple outlets including Fidé’s and  Chess.com ‘s own channels across Twitch, YouTube, Mixer, Twitter, and other international streaming platforms. With an estimated audience of several million worldwide, commentary by chess experts will be conducted in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Turkish and Polish.”  

There is a point about chess, which expands what I said earlier in this column about the statistics of mass participation. Namely, that the digital future is not just one of sponsored tournaments online for the elite, but that  greater access in general, and specifically for those previously excluded, could evolve into a valuable social tool. Though chess clearly begins and spreads historically as an elite game, it has since shown a considerable capacity to appeal to/console the disadvantaged — prisoners, the sick, those in tough conditions and so on.

The isolation of the chess mind is the topic of Stefan Zweig’s Schachnovelle (usually translated as The Royal Game) where the protagonist Dr B seeks mental refuge in chess from his Nazi tormentors. Schachnovelle was written in 1941, a year before Zweig’s suicide, and it found a curious echo in real life. The Dutch Grandmaster Jan Hein Donner, he of the exploding ashtray, covered in my column “Smokescreens”, says in his essays that on relocating to a care home, hardly able to move after a stroke, his world shrank to a very small space. He then added: “But chess players are used to that.”

So, as we retreat behind our individual castle ramparts, it is becoming apparent that in the post Covid-19 environment, those enterprises will flourish which can adapt to online delivery of their services.   After 9/11, the act of applying for   a high street business bank account gradually became an exercise in pulling teeth. Last week it took just half an hour to open an account with Starling Bank, a purely online venture. More or less simultaneously, another bank, the venerable Coutts, founded in 1692, sent out emails to promote online ordering of home delivery meals. The bountiful choice embraced ready to serve cuisine from gourmet restaurants, delicatessen standard fresh food, ranging from Cornish crabs and lobsters to vegetables and fruit from English and European market gardens. Furthermore, Bread Ahead Bakery in Borough Market have instituted daily online tutorials, delivering flour and yeast for home-baking, while giant eggs are on offer via online ordering from Norfolk Geese. These are a tiny sample of a wide and rapidly expanding trend. A whole new land of plenty has opened up online, without the need to stir from one’s home.  

Those enterprises which can evolve in the post-pandemic world will thrive. Sadly, however, those which cannot will go the way of the dinosaurs after the Chicxulub extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period.   The future is online and, as millions of new devotees are discovering, online chess is helping to show the way.