ALL THE RIGHT MOVES
Local chess club sees effects of worldwide boom
“The game of chess has literally never been more popular than it is right now.” — Levy Rozman, also known as GothamChess online
The chess world has been rapidly growing for the past several months, so much so that Chess. com — the de facto home for the chess community online — has struggled to deal with the sudden influx.
The Garland County Chess Club, which formerly met every two weeks, has also noticed the newfound excitement over the game. The club now meets from 2-5 p.m. each Sunday at the Garland County Library.
“You don’t think of chess being loud or anything,” Tony Webb, who founded the club about a year ago, said. “It gets a little rowdy over here, sometimes.”
According to a blog post on Chess. com, the site saw 7 million users in a single day for the first time on Dec. 31.
On Jan. 20, that number increased to 10 million. Traffic on the site, which reached 100 million members in December, has nearly doubled in the span of about three weeks, causing crashes and technical difficulties.
To deal with this, they are bolstering their live chess and database servers with upgrades, but the fix is likely to take some time.
Webb said he has seen the interest swell in the last few months. “These last few meets have just been enormous. It’s been kinda loud over here.”
A recent Sunday saw a record turnout, with about 20 participants and several curious library-goers looking on.
He said he hopes to begin hosting events as the club grows, like a simul, an event where one advanced player simultaneously plays every member in the club. He also would like to see more women join the club and participate, as the game still has the stigma of being male-dominated.
Webb has an Elo rating of around 1,000 in rapid chess. Elo ratings are a way of calculating the relative skill level of a player. To put that in perspective, earning the rank of Grandmaster requires players
to achieve an Elo of at least 2,500 and score three norms. Norms are official competitions featuring other GMs. On the other hand, the rank of Woman Grandmaster requires an Elo of 2,300, although women can earn the rank of Grandmaster, as well.
Other available titles include International Master, with an Elo of 2,400, FIDE Master at 2,300, Woman International Master at 2,200, Candidate Master at 2,200, Woman FIDE Master at 2,100 and Woman Candidate Master at 2,000.
The Garland County Chess Club has over 10 regular members with skill levels ranging from beginner to 1,800-1,900 Elo and welcomes people at all levels and ages to participate.
There are several reasons for the sudden interest in the game that dates back over 1,400 years.
From 2020-2021, the classic board game experienced a similar boom due to the pandemic-related lockdown, Netflix’s “The Queen’s Gambit” and the rise of online chess teachers and personalities.
Arguably the most influential of the three was the Netflix miniseries, named after one of the oldest common openings, that made the game thrilling again.
This current boom is much more substantial. But will it last?
“The game of chess has literally never been more popular than it is right now,” Levy Rozman, also known as GothamChess online, said in one of his YouTube videos on the topic. “There has never been a better time to get into chess.”
Rozman is an American with the rank of IM and markets himself as “the internet’s chess teacher.” The 27-yearold from Brooklyn now has 2.6
Perhaps the biggest draw to Chess.com has been the newest chess bot taking the internet by storm — Mittens.
million subscribers on YouTube and 721,000 followers on Twitch. He, too, has noticed a dramatic increase in views and subscribers over the last several weeks.
Webb said the advent of such streaming sites has helped people make a living with the game who normally would not be able to. It also makes learning more accessible as viewers can choose from a plethora of content creators instead of finding a book.
Recent articles by the New York Times and other publications have also played into the resurgence of the sport. According to Rozman, the hype is also thanks to an increase in the viewership of the International Chess Federation tournaments, which usually go unnoticed. This is due, in part, to a YouTube channel, ChessBase India, which has covered these tournaments with livestreams and short videos.
Perhaps the biggest draw to Chess.com has been the newest chess bot taking the internet by storm — Mittens.
Introduced alongside four other feline bots, Mittens is represented by a cute drawing of a kitten with an Elo of just one, but Mittens has defeated the world’s best players and even bots with estimated Elo ratings of over 3,500, far above what any human has reached.
The highest human chess Elo ever recorded belongs to current World Chess Champion GM Magnus Carlsen, when he peaked at 2,882 in May 2014. Carlsen, 30, has reigned supreme for the past decade and has commented on Mittens.
“I can’t believe how that really quite transparent marketing trick is working,” he said. “It’s just a soulless computer that plays really well, and because it’s a picture of a kitten, you’re actually buying it.”
AI first defeated man on May 11, 1997, when IBM’s Deep Blue took down then World Chess Champion GM Garry Kasparov in a series of six games resulting in two wins, one loss and three draws for the computer.
Since then, the gulf between man and machine has only grown as technology has improved. Mittens is a world away from the first computer chess program developed on paper by Alan Turing in 1951.
Webb often plays the computers instead of people for the insight it can bring him. As a former tennis player, Webb said he enjoys how chess lets him engage in competition without the athletic factor because of his competition anxiety.
He said he enjoys studying chess, which can help players reach the next level.
“I play every day,” Webb said. “I at least study every day.”