The Rise of Internet Chess
Learning chess as a video game
Since the Covid-19 pandemic started there has been a notable renewed interest in chess, as many players flocked to the internet as the defacto alternative to the legendary board game. However, it wasn’t until the release of the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit that internet chess really started to boom.
I never played much chess as a kid. I was more interested in video games, and while the allure of the game’s prestige was enough for me to pick it up occasionally, I never stuck with it. Probably for a few reasons: for me it was much easier to play and improve at a video game when I was solo queuing than it was with chess, as chess required 2 players in person. Coupled with the fact that the video games I was playing were the hot mainstream commodities at the time with guides, streamers coming up, and tournaments, it makes a lot of sense why I never really got into chess before.
This past year, I had slowly been internalizing online chess as more of a video game experience, thanks to streamers. The games I’ve been playing for the last 10 years have slowly been losing my interest, as the excessive grinding and stopping has put me…
