'Chess Is An Esport': Here's Why Mind Game Could Be Ready-Made For Online

While India's rapid rise in world chess continues, the sport itself is making giant strides in the virtual gaming space. Chess has been included in the Esports World Cup for the first time and Nihal Sarin, Aravindh Chithambaram will be representing the country in the 2025 edition in Riyadh. (More Sports News)

The creme de la creme, which includes the likes of Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura and Ding Liren, has thrown its weight behind the format. There are musings on whether online chess can rival the over-the-board (OTB) version in the near future. But how different are the two?

If chess startup MGD1바카라™s founders Manu Gurtu and Sreekar Channapragada are to be believed, the two disciplines are fundamentally the same. "We believe that chess is an esport. Even over-the-board chess. I'll tell you how," Manu proceeds to explain in an interview with Outlook.

"Esport is anything that you play on PCs (personal computers) using peripherals. It could be a joystick, a mouse, a keyboard. These days, all the boards that are being used in top-level chess are digital boards. They are connected to a PC. Essentially, it is a peripheral on which you are playing. So it is an esport even if you're playing on a physical board connected to a peripheral.

"That is the reason why you can take it as it is, put it on the screen and play. It's probably one of the only sports where you can do this. I can't think of anything else where nothing really changes, apart from the speed of movement, mouse clicks and those kind of aspects," he adds.

The logistical convenience of scheduling games between players across the world, eliminating travel-related costs, is a definite benefit. But that doesn't mean there will be no takers for traditional chess eventually, as per Manu. "I think both have their own place, and will always continue to do so. There is a certain feel to pressing the clock manually after making a move and getting flagged while doing that.

"There is also a feel to bullet chess which you possibly cannot do on OTB, not effectively at least. You cannot be making moves in microseconds. You cannot be pre-moving either, as can be done on a virtual chess board on a monitor. So both have their own aspects. I think they can co-exist, and they will always coexist. It's not about one taking over the other," Manu opines.

The onset of coronavirus brought a majority of sports to a standstill globally, but chess found a way out thanks to the aforementioned ease of digital adaptation. A huge case in point being the FIDE Chess Olympiad, which was hosted online in 2020 and 2021. The sequence of events also led to speeding up the growth of chess as an esport, Manu states.

"It definitely did happen because of the (coronavirus) pandemic and partly also because of the Champions Chess Tour being a massive success, which was during the pandemic. Even this time around, people are qualifying through the Champions Chess Tour for the esports World Cup. Esports as a whole is growing and some figures put it as an industry which is larger than entertainment and sports combined. It's just good for the sport in general."

What's not good for the sport is the menace of cheating. It remains a prickly issue in online chess, and one that is "very, very difficult" to address, according to Manu. He mentions that there are tournaments where they have started sending an arbiter to each individual player's house.

But that's really expensive, Sreekar chimes in. "If you send an arbiter to different players' houses playing across the world, you'd rather get them all to one place. It's just defeating the purpose," he says.

Manu believes the approach towards online chess has been different than other esports and perhaps "incorrect". He elaborates: "In all the other esports or tournaments, be it Counter Strike or Valorant or DOTA, they have these LAN events. They have a LAN server. The whole team sits down at the same location and they play on their screens.

"I think there is enough incentive, in the form of bullet chess and speed chess, which can be done so much better on a screen. They can get players to a location and have them play on screen, instead of having them play across the world. That way, you alleviate the problem of cheating and still have a proper esports tournament kind of a vibe to it."

The chess management professional is quick to add that conversely, "it makes no sense" to play a classical tournament on the screen. "Chess will only succeed in esports in the faster formats, not in the classical one. If you're playing classical, you might as well just play over the board."

Sreekar brings forth another fascinating aspect, with regards to players' response to the two formats. "The only thing that I've noticed amongst players is that they take OTB chess a lot more seriously. When they touch those physical pieces, something triggers in them. I don't know what. It could be a very psychological, subjective thing. But I've gotten feedback that the feel of the chessboard wasn't good. It's like how swimmers say that the pool wasn't fast. The rest of us might never understand why the pool wasn't faster. It's just a swimming pool.

"So we had to change chessboards or pieces so that psychological effect of the pieces and the board and the decorum of the playing hall is different, as compared to how it is in esports. In esports, it's all noise, while OTB chess is all silence. And for top OTB chess players to go into the esports realm, they have to get used to the noise, the flashing lights, the commentary and the music," he adds.

In a nutshell, he summarizes, "what is happening is they take the silent version of chess a lot more seriously and they take the noisy version of chess as a more fun kind of sport".

But that has brought about a positive effect too, with a "lot more interesting games happening online" than on OTB. Manu puts it in context: "Because that fear is not there of playing something very serious, players will try and play a lot of funky moves, a lot of different ideas because there is nothing to lose; there is no rating being lost. They would try all kind of crazy ideas and you would get to see such beautiful chess games that are happening online, as compared to OTB."