Millenials take it for granted but older generations still remember the time when there was no internet at all. I only started to use it at the age of 22 in 1998. It was the year when I started to work a couple of months after I graduated as an engineer. At my job I got an email-address so I was able to share and receive information from my new colleagues.
In the next couple of months some of those colleagues discovered a way to use the mailserver as a medium to correspond with newsgroups. I was pleasantly surprised to find out also chess was available among them. For me it was the very beginning of using the internet also for chess. The newsgroups rec.games.chess.misc, rec.games.chess.analysis and rec.games.chess.computer were a source of joy to me. I spent many hours at it reading and writing posts. In those early days of the internet those newsgroups were very active. You can still consult them today and it is even possible to track some of my messages from 1999-2003 (when I wasn't using yet a nickname).
I can't remember exactly when but I guess it must have been 1999 when we as employers got access to the www (world wide web) and got the possibility to visit different sites. As it was all very new and management wasn't sure what the impact would be on the performances, people's behavior on the internet was monitored very closely. Each month the employers having visited the most number of non work-related sites, were summoned and warned for sanctions. Playing online chess was no option for me although some sites already were offering this.
Only a bit later around my 25th birthday when my parents afforded a modem, I played my first games of chess online. Yahoo offered a large scale of online games and chess was one of them. I never played much online at that time as I could only play when I was visiting my parents (I live at more than 100km distance). Beside using the internet was quite expensive as you paid a fee per minute as they had no monthly unlimited subscription. Anyway from that time onward online chess became something I always was interested in.
Yahoo was one of the very first providers of online games on the market. For chess it was a very simple platform but also free which did attract unfortunately also a huge number of poor sportsmanship players. Slowly other and better alternatives became available which were offering more features and started to check cheating, behavior,... Consequently Yahoo lost more and more users and in 2016 they logically pulled out the plug of their platform. In parallel there also has been from the beginning premium platforms like ICC so for which you pay but get a much better service. Nevertheless I always refused to pay for playing some mediocre blitz online.
It was only in 2007 when I finally took an internetsubscription at home. I had married my Russian girlfriend some months earlier so obviously the internet would become for her something very useful to communicate with her family far away. Meanwhile I also discovered that the internet brought for me too quite some interesting new possibilities. It was the start of my very active online chess-career. My preferred platform became Playchess despite it was not for free. However that doesn't mean I was paying for it as Playchess allows any newcomer to test their platform for some time without charge. Each time the trail-period ended, I created a new account. This way I played 10-thousands of games. After a while Playchess found out about it and blocked for some time my IP-address but I didn't care. A break was often very welcome as playing online can become very addictive.
A decade past by and Playchess didn't change much till 2017 when I started to notice changes in the population on the server. I needed to wait longer and longer to find an opponent rated same or higher than myself. I also noticed that fewer and fewer Belgian (sub-) toppers were online. Nowadays it is even very exceptional to still meet somebody. I understand we are all more busy than ever so getting less free time to play online but where is the youth (see below screenshot from 13th of January at 8 PM)?
 |
| Peakhour at Playchess with only 9 Belgian players, only 1200 players online in the mainroom and only 4 higher rated players than myself online. |
It is a golden era for online chess with the many variants of free and stable platforms but I also see some important disadvantages. Lichess, chess.com, chess24, Fide Online Arena, gameknot are just some of the possibilities so we clearly have a diaspora of players. A platform like chess.com would love to create champions with the same status and generating the same magnitude of publicity like we see in standard chess but this won't happen in this fragmented online-world. It is also much harder for amateurs to find a friend which you know from standard chess unless everybody subscribes on multiple sites like theunknownone on chess24, theunknownonex on chess.com and TheUnknownOnex on lichess.
However the biggest disadvantage of the current generation of free platforms is that your own games are stored online contrary to Playchess. I am not talking about the rather small effort which is needed to download your own games but rather that other people can look at your own games while you don't even know about it. People can use it to prepare against you. I wrote an article in 2017 that one should use a nickname at Playchess even if the other one can only see the games you mutually played. Naturally the danger is here 100x bigger.
Nonetheless last year in Open Brasschaat it took me little time to find hundreds sometimes even thousands of online games from 5 of my 9 opponents. It is incredible while everybody tries as much as possible to avoid publication of their games (see e.g. password). How can this be possible? This was also the question of 1 of my 5 victims after our game had finished.
He had used just like the others a nickname which should normally be sufficient to stay anonymous. However I have detected many players don't take into account a security-leak which is caused by the friend-requests. Once you know 1 player of a group of friends then it is often very simple to reveal the identity of the others. I want to show 1 very funny example which I encountered some time ago as it is not everyday that you can find a Belgian player hiding himself under the flag of Papua New Guinea (which explains the title of this article !).
In the 4th round of the most recent edition of Open Leuven I played against the Belgian expert William Boudry. Before I had a couple of hours to prepare. Nowadays I always start with a quick check via google and search chess.com & name/first name. If the profile is not well protected then I can already find their online games. This was the case here see jr-boetje but unfortunately the last activity dated from 2012 so it was useless for me. Next I switch to lichess where I often use as starting profile the one of FM Warre De Waele as with 44 followers he has one of the better networks in Flanders see warredw/followers. One of his friends attracted immediately my attention as he had a special nickname and was using the flag of Papua New Guinea see: WBoe3.
Thanks to the TV-serie W817 which was on the air around the year 2000, I was familiar with writing words by a combination of letters and numbers. So W817 = W-acht een-s even (wait a moment). It isn't hard anymore to see that WBoe3 can mean William Boudry. A check of the online played lichess games against the most recent games of William in the mega-database confirmed my suspicion. I was almost sure that I had the right online and active profile found of my opponent. This is gold for the preparation of a game.
On the other hand getting your hands on hundreds of even thousands of games creates also additional stress. It is impossible to check all the content seriously in just a couple of hours. I had to be pragmatic. My best chance was to focus at the most recently played games which proved to be the right decision. Below game played a couple of days before we played against each other in Open Leuven, was crucial.
[Event "Rated Blitz game"]
[Site "https://lichess.org/v3TKcCm4"]
[Date "2019.11.07"]
[Round "?"]
[White "echecetmat45"]
[Black "WBoe3"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C11"]
[WhiteElo "2235"]
[BlackElo "2193"]
[PlyCount "131"]
[EventDate "2019.??.??"]
[EventType "blitz"]
[TimeControl "180"]
1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 {(In the Megadatabase we can find a couple of recent
games of William in which he chooses the French defense but none of his
opponents responded with 3.Nc3. So this game was useful additional information
which I found via his profile on lichess. Besides this game was played less than
3 days before we met in Leuven.)} 3... Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 5. f4 c5 6. Nf3 Be7 7. Be3
O-O 8. dxc5 Bxc5 {(I prepared for Bxc5 but also for Nc6. Maybe William was
triggered by my quick play but in Leuven he surprised me with Nxc5 which
unfortunately I hadn't checked.)} 9. Qd2 Nc6 10. O-O-O Qb6 11. Bxc5 Nxc5 12. h4
Rd8 13. Nd4 Nxd4 14. Qxd4 Nd7 15. h5 Qxd4 16. Rxd4 a6 17. g4 b5 18. g5 Nf8 19.
Bd3 Bb7 20. Rg1 Rac8 21. g6 hxg6 22. hxg6 Nxg6 23. Bxg6 fxg6 24. Rxg6 Kf7 25.
Rg5 g6 26. a4 Rc4 27. Rxc4 bxc4 28. Ne2 Bc6 29. a5 d4 30. c3 d3 31. Nd4 Be4 32.
Rg3 Rh8 33. Rg1 Rh2 {(This is obviously winning for black but as it is
blitz,nothing is granted.)} 34. Rf1 Bg2 35. Rf2 Rh1+ 36. Kd2 Bh3 37. b3 cxb3 38.
Nxb3 Bf5 39. Nc5 Ra1 40. Nxa6 Rxa5 41. Nb4 Ra3 42. Nxd3 Ra2+ 43. Ke3 Rxf2 44.
Nxf2 Ke7 45. Kd4 Kd7 46. Kc5 Kc7 47. c4 Kd7 48. Kb6 Kc8 49. Kc6 Kb8 50. Kd7 Kb7
51. c5 Bc2 52. c6+ Kb6 53. c7 Ba4+ 54. Kd8 Bd7 55. Kxd7 Kc5 56. c8=Q+ Kd4 57.
Kxe6 g5 58. Kf6 gxf4 59. e6 f3 60. e7 Ke3 61. e8=Q+ Kxf2 62. Qc4 Kg2 63. Qce4
Kh2 64. Qg8 f2 65. Qe5+ Kh3 66. Qh5# {Normal} 1-0
I already once covered this opening on this blog see the hyper modern french but in our new game I experienced theory has evolved again in the last 2 years enormously. Anyway I wasn't familiar with the sub-variant popping up on the board so logically I played something safer but less critical.
[Event "Open Leuven 4de ronde"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "2019.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Brabo"]
[Black "Boudry, W."]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[ECO "C11"]
[WhiteElo "2264"]
[BlackElo "2050"]
[PlyCount "45"]
[EventDate "2019.??.??"]
1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 5. f4 c5 6. Nf3 Be7 {(In the
megadatabase there are no games of William with this line. Nonethelss I was
prepared for it as I found after some research the online blitz-account of my
opponent in which he tried this very recently.)} 7. Be3 O-O 8. dxc5 {(3 years
earlier I chose also in Leuven for the more popular Qd2 in my game against Jan
Rogiers.)} 8... Nxc5 {(I didn't have good conditions to prepare for this game as
in the morning I was busy coaching my children in the youth-championship of
Antwerp. Maybe in better conditions I would've also checked Nxc5 but I am not
sure about that as there were no games from William of it even online. I only
checked Nc6 and Bxc5 in my preparations of this game.)} 9. Qd2 {(A very
different interesting idea seems to me Be2 with 0-0.)} 9... a6 10. Nd4?! {(I
wasn't familiar with this position so I liked to keep the option of both
castlings open. Besides I also hoped my move would take William out of book
which indeed happened. Although d4 is a nice square for the knight, a more
critical continuation is 0-0-0.)} (10. O-O-O! Nc6! (10... Nbd7?! {(Nc6
transposes to the theoretical mainline but in the only 3 mastergames of the
megadatabase with this sequence of moves always Nbd7 was played. I think this
would've been the choice of William based on how he responded in this game. )}
11. b4! {(This novelty is shown by the engines and more or less refutes the
concept.)} 11... b6 12. h4! Nb7 13. Ng5 a5 14. Nxd5 exd5 15. Qxd5 axb4 16. Qe4
g6 17. e6! Nf6) 11. Qf2!? (11. h4!? b5 12. Qf2!? Na4 13. Nxa4 bxa4) 11...
b6!? 12. h4!? Bb7!? 13. Kb1 Qc7!? 14. h5 f6!? 15. Qg3 fxe5 16. fxe5 Rf7 17. Be2!
Raf8) 10... Qc7?! {(I assume William wants to prepare Nbd7 but I don't think
is optimal here. More accurate are probably Nc6 or b5.)} (10... b5!? 11. a3 Bb7
12. Bd3!? Ne4! 13. Qe2) 11. a3 b5 12. Be2?! {(B4 was shown by the top-engines
with some advantage but I didn't like the hole of c4.)} 12... Nbd7 13. O-O Rd8?!
{(Already during the game I wondered why not immediately Nb6.)} 14. Qe1?!
{(Leela manages with powerplay to profit from black's last move.)} (14. Bd3! Bb7
15. Qe2 Nb6!? 16. Rf3! g6!? 17. h4! Nc4!? 18. h5!) 14... Nb6 15. b3 Ne4 16.
Nd1 Bb7 17. Nf2 Bc5 18. Nd3?! {(I had taken Nc4 into account after Bxd4 but only
while William was thinking, I noticed it can be played even without Bxd4. So
better was to avoid it with Bd3 or Bh5.)} (18. Bd3!? Nd7! 19. b4!? Bb6 20. Rc1!?
Re8!) 18... Nc4 {(William realized only after some minutes that this move was
possible and he took some additional minutes to check the consequences of it.)}
19. bxc4 Bxd4 20. Bxd4 dxc4 21. c3?! {(I played this move after more than 15
minutes of reflection. The engine thinks it is the inferior one of both options
but practically it wasn't bad.)} (21. Be3! cxd3 22. cxd3 Nc3 23. Rc1 Nxe2+ 24.
Qxe2 Qd7 25. Rc3 Qd5) 21... cxd3 22. Bxd3 Qc6? {(William admitted after the
game that he underestimated his own position.)} (22... Nxc3! 23. Qxc3 {(Or first
Bxh7+ and next taking back on c3.)} 23... Qxc3 24. Bxh7+ Kxh7 25. Bxc3 {(The
endgame of opposite bishops with still rooks on the board is for sure no easy
draw. Stockfish even didn't manage to defend it with white when I let play out
the game against itself.)}) 23. Bxe4 {(Even now black is the only one still able
to play for a win. Of course I was relieved William accepted my proposal of a
draw.)} 1/2-1/2
It is not a success to score only a half point but looking at the final position this is the maximum which I could hope for. This example also shows how relatively unimportant open online games can be. It is doubtful to spend (lots) of time at searching and checking online games from an opponent. It is also doubtful to defriend players and to play exclusively anonymously. Anyway nobody can't say anymore after this article that I didn't warn them in advance.
Brabo
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