From March 14 to April 1, 2013, FIDE and AGON – the World Chess Federation’s
commercial partner – are staging the 2013 Candidates Tournament for the
World Chess Championship 2013. It will be the strongest tournament of its kind
in history. The venue is The IET,
2 Savoy Place, London. The Prize Fund to be shared by the players totals €510,000.
The winner of the Candidates will become the Challenger to Viswanathan Anand
who has reigned as World Champion since 2007. The main sponsor for the Candidates
is State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic SOCAR,
which has sponsored elite events chess in the past.
Press release
“Making the invisible visible!”
Innovative Technology turns Top-Level Chess into Spectator Sport
London, UK – March 23, 2013 – Visitors to the FIDE World Chess
Candidates Tournament, currently under way in London, got to be the first to
test drive a revolutionary new software platform that will become the standard
for chess entertainment broadcasting, turning the “oldest game”
into an exciting spectator sport.
The technology was conceived by AGON, FIDE’s commercial partner responsible
for marketing and commercializing the World Chess Championship Cycle, part of
their effort to make the pinnacle of chess more accessible and engaging and
to create an attractive platform for marketing partners to broadcast their association
with chess.
AGON’s CEO Andrew Paulson unveiled the technology
dubbed ‘ChessCasting’ at the Opening Ceremony.
The ChessCasting platform uses data visualisation to transform a tablet into
performance-enhancing goggles for spectators, allowing them to watch the game
with the eyes of a Grandmaster while witnessing the human struggle close up,
whether in the arena or a thousand miles away.
For the London event, Samsung is providing Galaxy tablets to the audience
sitting but metres away from the battling Grandmasters. Spectators follow the
games via pre-installed software on a new interface designed by world-renowned
Pentagram Design. (The players are also using a new “Championship”
chess set designed by Pentagram, the apotheosis of the standard Staunton set
created 150 years ago.)
The tablets offer close-up video of the players, the current state-of-play
on the boards supplemented by analytical, statistical and behavioural analysis
of the positions and lively audio exegesis by moderators commenting nearby.
The technology is also available online via browsers and with video streaming
from the venue around the world.
Plain vanilla broadcast for users worldwide with
mobile devices
ChessCasting consists of a number of engaging activities for investigating
or demonstrating what is going on in the games; the user can be active or sit
back and follow the commentary.
The Tournament View shows all four boards in progress
with an immediate graphical representation
of who is currently winning each game and how long since the last move was made.
The Game View reprises the relative advantage bar,
notes recent moves, gives a timeline of the game
up to the present moment, and provides for navigation for the viewer to move
around the game.
The BoilerRoom View breaks down the ‘advantage’ into the components
the Komodo chess engine uses to analyse the current position: material, king
safety, pawn strength, mobility, initiative. And, in the Sandbox View, the audience
can test their moves on spare boards and share their ideas with pop-up mini-communities
in the playing hall and around the world, in real time.
ChessCasting is being developed by ThoughtWorks, a U.S.-based global software
company. In future releases, biometric parameters will be added to the BoilerRoom
View and mapped onto the time line: heartbeat, blood pressure, galvanic skin
response. Greater commenting, sharing and playing features in the Sandbox View
will allow users to become commentators on current and historic games, their
own games, and broadcast audio in their own languages. And finally, AGON will
shortly be releasing the ChessTree View App which for the first time allows
Grandmasters and novices alike to view, compare and analyse not just positions,
but entire games, entire careers.
On the first day of play, a Londoner, one of the early users said about the
tablet: “Such a simple idea, but such a tremendous innovation. Sitting
in the grand, silent playing hall, this secular holy-of-holies, totally immersed
in the four games in front of me on my tablet. It kept me engrossed for hours.”
A Lebanese investment banker, taking off the afternoon from work, regretted
that he couldn’t come every day to the tournament venue, but noted that
“with ChessCasting, the experience in the hall is more intense, but the
experience at my desk will not disappoint. I doubt I’ll get much work
done over the coming two weeks.”
A French Grandmaster concurred: “It is a brilliant idea. Lots of interesting
new tools and having Nigel Short whispering in your ear while you are meters
away from Kramnik burying his head in his hands or Carlsen’s feline prowling
and stretching. Wow!”
An American software developer and chess enthusiast, just off a flight from
JFK, understood the potential: “I assume that soon I’ll be able
to record my own games with my friends, add my own commentary and when I slaughter
my friend in a particularly cruel fashion, I’ll be able to post my ChessCast
to Facebook. These guys understand the social potential of chess; the sooner
the better.”
“The ChessCasting system is a natural development from the big advances
we have seen in recent years from the transmissions from the World Cup or London
Chess Classics. There are strong new functions and some nice graphical features.
Whenever you try something new not everything is right the first time around.
Personally I would probably have gone for pieces that were a bit more standard,
but this is certainly debateable. Also it should be considered that red on grey
is not helpful for the colour blind. But despite these minor quibbles, I am
sure that people will get to like it more as they get used to the new functions
and design. Especially I think we will be very happy with Version 2.0 at the
World Championship later this year, when the programmers have had time to take
in the feedback from this event,” said Danish chess grandmaster Jacob
Aagaard.
Anastasiya Karlovich, FIDE Press Officer
