Online chess is chess that is played over the Internet, allowing players to play against each other in real time. This is done through the use of Internet chess servers, which often include a system to pair up individual players based on their rating using an Elo or similar chess rating system. Online chess has existed since the 1970s, but has seen a rapid growth in popularity amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and rise of chess livestreaming.
Online chess has existed in various forms including PLATO and play-by-email since the dawn of the Internet in the 1970s. The first Internet server designed for online chess was the Internet Chess Club (known at the time as ICS), which started operation in 1992. [1] The first chess website, which allowed playing through a graphical interface, was Caissa.com (known at the time as Caissa's Web) which launched in 1995. [2] Since then, a number of chess websites have been developed. These include Chess.com, Lichess, and chess24, which were the largest chess websites as of 2021. [3] Since January 31, 2024, chess24 has closed their website. [4]
Online chess saw a spike in growth during the quarantines of the COVID-19 pandemic. [5] [6] This was due to both isolation and the popularity of Netflix miniseries The Queen's Gambit , which was released in October 2020. [5] [6] Chess app downloads on the App Store and Google Play Store rose by 63% after the show debuted. [7] Chess.com saw more than twice as many account registrations in November as it had in previous months, and the number of games played monthly on Lichess doubled as well. [8] There was also a demographic shift in players, with female registration on Chess.com shifting from 22% of new players to 27% of new players. [9] [8] Grandmaster Maurice Ashley said "A boom is taking place in chess like we have never seen maybe since the Bobby Fischer days," attributing the growth to an increased desire to do something constructive during the pandemic. [10] USCF Women's Program Director Jennifer Shahade stated that chess works well on the Internet, since pieces do not need to be reset and matchmaking is virtually instant. [11] In 2023, Youtube revealed that the game of online chess had amassed over 4 billion views during the calendar year. [12]
Online chess livestreaming also saw a surge amidst the pandemic. Players like Hikaru Nakamura, Daniel Naroditsky, and Levy Rozman along with many others streamed chess via Twitch, with more than 41 million hours of chess being watched total on the platform from March to August 2020. [13] [8] Chess.com teamed up with high-level chess streamers to organize PogChamps, an amateur tournament contested between popular Internet personalities that was streamed on Twitch and at one point became the top-viewed stream on the platform. [13]
Chess websites pair players based on a chess rating system; after a game ends, ratings are updated immediately and players may search for a new game using their updated ratings. [14] The Internet Chess Club uses the Elo rating system, while Chess.com uses the Glicko rating system and Lichess the Glicko-2 rating system, which are modern and more complex versions of Elo. [15]
Over-the-board (OTB) chess is traditionally played with a slow time control, meaning players are allowed more time to consider moves. Online chess is often played faster, with 93.8% of live chess games on Chess.com being played with a time control of 10 minutes per side or faster. [16] International Master Anna Rudolf said that "online chess' shift to speed chess has brought excitement to the game." [8]
A premove is an instruction given by a player to a chess program to make a certain move on a following turn if possible. Premoving is a feature exclusive to online chess. It is offered by many chess websites, including the Internet Chess Club, the Free Internet Chess Server, Chess.com, and Lichess. Chess.com allows players to make multiple premoves at once. The Internet Chess Club allows one to block players who use premoves.
There is some amount of strategy involved when premoving. Generally, premoves should only be used when the chosen move would be a good move in any subsequent position where it would be valid, such as if it is a response to a potential capture by one's opponent. Premoves may also be useful in extreme time trouble to avoid running out of time.
Online cheating is an issue that has had a large effect on all levels of play. This is usually achieved by using a chess engine to get the best moves in a given position, though it can take other forms including sandbagging and rating manipulation. [17] Chess.com stated in August 2020 that they were closing roughly 500 accounts each day due to cheating, some of whom were Grandmasters and titled players. [17]
High-level chess tournaments were largely forced online during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the FIDE Online Nations Cup and the Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour. [18] These were played on websites like Chess.com and chess24, but enforced additional rules on webcam usage and screen sharing in order to prevent cheating. Some tournaments also disallowed leaving the computer for breaks or to walk around, which would usually be allowed in an in-person tournament. [18]
Chess is a board game for two players. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to distinguish it from related games such as xiangqi and shogi.
The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess or esports. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor.
Atomic chess is a chess variant. Standard rules of chess apply, but all captures result in an "explosion" through which the capturing piece, captured piece, and all surrounding pieces of both colors other than pawns are removed from play. Some variations additionally remove rules concerning check such that the king may be able to move into or remain in check.
The Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) is a volunteer-run Internet chess server. It was organised as a free alternative to the Internet Chess Club (ICC), after that site began charging for membership.
An Internet chess server (ICS) is an external server that provides the facility to play, discuss, and view the board game of chess over the Internet. The term specifically refers to facilities for connecting players through a variety of graphical chess clients located on each user's computer.
Cheating in chess is a deliberate violation of the rules of chess or other behaviour that is intended to give an unfair advantage to a player or team. Cheating can occur in many forms and can take place before, during, or after a game. Commonly cited instances of cheating include: collusion with spectators or other players, use of chess engines during play, rating manipulation, and violations of the touch-move rule. Many suspiciously motivated practices are not comprehensively covered by the rules of chess.
Wesley Barbossa So is a Filipino and American chess grandmaster, a three-time U.S. Chess Champion, and the first World Fischer Random Chess Champion. He is also a three-time Philippine Chess Champion. On the March 2017 FIDE rating list, he was ranked number two in the world and had an Elo rating of 2822, making him the fifth-highest-rated player in history.
A chess rating system is a system used in chess to estimate the strength of a player, based on their performance versus other players. They are used by organizations such as FIDE, the US Chess Federation, International Correspondence Chess Federation, and the English Chess Federation. Most of the systems are used to recalculate ratings after a tournament or match but some are used to recalculate ratings after individual games. Popular online chess sites such as chess.com, Lichess, and Internet Chess Club also implement rating systems. In almost all systems, a higher number indicates a stronger player. In general, players' ratings go up if they perform better than expected and down if they perform worse than expected. The magnitude of the change depends on the rating of their opponents. The Elo rating system is currently the most widely used. The Elo-like ratings systems have been adopted in many other contexts, such as other games like Go, in online competitive gaming, and in dating apps.
Chess.com is an internet chess server and social networking website. The site has a freemium model in which some features are available for free, and others are available for accounts with subscriptions. Live online chess can be played against other users in daily, rapid, blitz or bullet time controls, with a number of chess variants available. Chess versus a chess engine, computer analysis, chess puzzles and teaching resources are offered.
Nihal Sarin is an Indian chess grandmaster and chess prodigy. In 2018, he passed the Elo rating of 2600 at 14 years old, which at the time made him the third youngest player in history to do so.
chess24.com was an Internet chess server in English and ten other languages, established in 2014 by German grandmaster Jan Gustafsson and Enrique Guzman. Chess24 also provided live coverage of major international chess tournaments, and hosted their own online tournaments, including the Magnus Carlsen Invitational.
Lichess is a free and open-source Internet chess server run by a non-profit organization of the same name. Users of the site can play online chess anonymously and optionally register an account to play rated games. Lichess is ad-free and all the features are available for free, as the site is funded by donations from patrons. Features include chess puzzles, computer analysis, tournaments and chess variants.
Andrew Tang is an American chess grandmaster. He is also a popular streamer, known online for his speed chess skills especially in bullet, hyperbullet, and ultrabullet time controls as well as for playing speed chess blindfolded.
Alexandra Valeria Botez is an American-Canadian chess player and commentator, poker player, Twitch streamer, and YouTuber. In chess, she holds the FIDE title of Woman FIDE Master (WFM) and has a peak FIDE rating of 2092. She is a five-time Canadian girls' national champion and one-time U.S. girls' national champion. Botez has represented Canada at three Women's Chess Olympiads in 2012, 2014, and 2016. Alexandra and her younger sister Andrea Botez host the BotezLive Twitch and YouTube channels, which each have over 1 million followers and are one of the largest chess channels on each platform.
The Queen's Gambit is a 2020 American coming-of-age period drama television miniseries based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Walter Tevis. The title refers to the "Queen's Gambit", a chess opening. The series was written and directed by Scott Frank, who created it with Allan Scott, who owns the rights to the book. Beginning in the mid-1950s and proceeding into the 1960s, the story follows the life of Beth Harmon, a fictional American chess prodigy on her rise to the top of the chess world while struggling with drug and alcohol dependency.
Hans Moke Niemann is an American chess grandmaster and Twitch streamer. He became a FIDE Grandmaster on January 22, 2021. In July 2021, he won the World Open chess tournament in Philadelphia. He first entered the Top 100 Junior players list at position 88 on March 1, 2019, and as of September 2023, he was the eighth-highest-rated Junior in the world. His peak global ranking was No. 31, in May 2023.
Levy Rozman, known online as GothamChess, is an American chess International Master, content creator, commentator, and author. Often referred to as "The Internet's Chess Teacher", he produces content on the online platforms Twitch, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
Eline Roebers is a Dutch chess International Master. She is the reigning Dutch Women's Champion and was the 2022 Dutch Youth Champion in the open division. Roebers was the 2020 online World Youth Champion in the under-14 girls' division, and was the first Dutch player to win a World Youth Championship in any category. Roebers began playing chess at age seven and she has been coached by Dutch International Master Robert Ris. Her father Jan is a FIDE Master (FM). She won an individual bronze medal on the second board at the European Women's Team Championship in 2021.
Jack Mizzi is a Maltese chess player. He was born on the 17 May 2006 in Malta and is the U-20 Junior Chess Champion, the National Rapid Chess Champion and the National Blitz Chess Champion in Malta. Mizzi is the youngest chess player to have won the Preliminaries in Malta at 13 years old. At 16 years old he became the youngest Maltese player to be awarded the Candidate Master title. He was called a chess "prodigy" by the online journal Malta Today in their short documentary about Mizzi. Mizzi participated in the World Youth Chess Championships in Romania 2022. In 2023 he set a new Malta chess record winning the Malta Blitz Championship with a perfect 9-0 score.
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