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Merits of playing chess online

Online chess is the latest trend that is fast catching up with the chess loving people across the world. There are many reasons for this latest trend.

More and more people are using the World Wide Web or the Internet as it is otherwise called in common parlance. Despite being played since the 6th Century AD, this ancient game of chess has fascinated the computer programmers and engineers and they are coming up with innovative ways of playing the game of chess, however, without altering the basic structure or rules of the game. The fun, excitement, and the challenge the game poses to a player has increased manifold in online chess.

Why one should prefer online chess than conservative ways of playing chess with another player in front of a chessboard?

In conservative form of chess, the two players should be physically available with lot of time at their disposal. They should then sit at a common and quiet place and start playing the game. One interesting aspect of chess is that either it can be completed in less than 5 minutes or it may take more than 4 to 5 hours to complete the game, depending upon the skill set as well as style of play of two players. I am talking about the game of chess, played at home or in a club for the purpose of practice or enriching your skill set. If you were to play in a tournament or a FIDE-rated championship, then the rules might be slightly altered where timers will be there and other people or spectators might be there.

For conventional chess, you should get hold of a friend or a relative, finalize the time and place, and then start playing the game. One more disadvantage of conservative chess is that a person can play with a specific set of people at any point of time, friends, relatives or such other known people. Over a period of time, the style and approach of the opponents will be familiar to you and the scope for learning new things, exploiting new ideas and implementing the same is much limited, unless you are more passionate about learning the game in its entirety. Secondly, there will tend to be a mismatch between the talents of the two players. Either you will be winning all the time if the opponent is novice and will always be hearing checkmate from your opponent, if he is more experienced and skilled than you. In either of the ways, the urge to excel might start waning over a period.

Now, in online chess, you can play the game whenever you want to play or feel like playing. All you need is the personal computer or laptop and Internet connection with reasonably good broadband connectivity. It is immaterial whether it is early hours in the morning or late in the night at your place, you can connect to the site providing online chess, register yourself, (many sites do not charge at the initial stages), enter into virtual chess rooms, invite player to play or choose any one of the waiting players to start the game. Online chess sites offer the game to all types of players. If you register yourself as a novice, then you will be given a certain basic rating. Depending upon the number of games you play and the number of games you win, your rating keeps on changing. Starting from the basic reading of say, 750 points, you can increase your score to as high as 2700 – which is around or equal the grandmaster’s cadre. Depending upon the number of games you played in the site, your rating will be assigned and displayed against your name. For example, you got a rating of 1100, and you want to choose a partner in online chess site. You can find a player having a rating between 1050 and 1150 and then invite him to play chess with you. In that way, the game between both of you will be an even one and will be interesting enough.

This feature of choosing a player based on his ranking is possible only on online chess. The type of players you will be playing there will also be different. People from New Zealand in the east to people in the northern part of Canada or in Alaska can be found in the online chess site. You can play with people from different countries or places and engage in healthy exchange of ideas. The approach to the game of chess by a Russian player would be quite different from a player coming from Chennai, the home town of Vishy Anand. However, the language of all these people is only chess and that language is more than sufficient for a game.

The only disadvantage is that interaction will not be there between the two players.

These are some of the major reasons for online chess than the traditional way of playing chess across the chessboard.