Its now at 12 weeks (I think - I may have lost count!) since anyone was able to play chess Over The Board, and all I can say is thank goodness for the internet. Of course, online chess has its problems, especially the never absent elephant in the room, cheating, but hopefully the smart algorithms of the major platforms weed out the culprits to leave a level playing field for the rest of us who just want to play chess. And boy, do we play!?
Thanks to Joshua, we were very quick off the mark with our very own Kenilworth online club on Lichess, which has become a regular Thursday night institution for some of us, and a more infrequent stop for plenty of others. But that still leaves another 6 days and about 20 hours per week, when we can cast our search for an opponent just a tad wider, and take on the whole world. So I thought I would take a quick peek to see just how active the 17 KCC online club members are.
Now, bear in mind that I have had to restrict the search to just the single platform of Lichess (as I don't know user names for anyone on other sites), and also that the numbers I have collected relate to life-time, not lock-down, activity. So plenty of people were already active online pre lock-down, when everyone still thought that Covid 19 was a local postcode. With that in mind, here are the activity lists for the KCC online fraternity. (Numbers accurate at mid-day, Saturday June 13th.)
We start with the Ultra-Bullet category. Which is 15 seconds per player for the entire game! Not a suitable pastime for the old timers, or even the middle aged! Which explains why Jude is way out on his own as a practitioner of this scary format with 562 games, well ahead of Paul (who is old enough to know better) on 142. The only others brave/stupid enough to even dip their toe in the Ultra-Bullet water are Matt (29 games) and Billy (11).
Moving up to the slightly slower Bullet category (typically 1 min +0, but also available as an old man's version of 2 mins + 1 sec) we find the same two leaders, but with rankings reversed. Paul is the most active Bullet player from the KCC ranks, with 3.025 games, some way clear of Jude's 2,294. The less predictable names of Matt (1,276) and Bernard R (971) come next, followed by me (862) and Billy (362). Ben (327), Joshua (147) and Lionel (83) complete the list.
So just the 9 active Bullet-eers, but numbers start to mount when we move into the much more respectable area of Blitz (typically anything from 3 mins + 0, through to 5 mins + 5 secs). So now we need a proper list, on which we find a runaway leader:-
Matt 5,186 (No wonder he didn't have the time to play OTB for us last season!!)
Mark 1,441
Paul 1,330
Joshua 1,086
Lionel 789
Bernard R 766
Jude 512
Algis 486
Ben 322
Billy 123
Bernard C 30
Andy B 21
It's quite clear that neither Bernard C, nor Andy B, has yet discovered the joys of playing against the wider world. Perhaps just as well, given how it can take over your life. Isn't that right, Matt?!
Perhaps befitting the demographic of the club, it is in the Rapid category (10 mins to about 25 mins per game) that we find the widest levels of participation, with no less than 16 of the 17 KCC Online members having played at least 1 game. And if I gave you ten guesses, it's unlikely you would be able to successfully pick the man in second place!
Matt 1,539
Roy 1,403 (Amazing - as he didn't know the internet existed before lock-down!)
Jude 165
Ben 154
Bernard R 141
Joshua 76
Mark 65
Billy 48
Andy B 45
Algis 37
Bernard C 35
Lionel 18
Paul 14
Phil 3
Noah 1
Now, some club organisers would be massively affronted that someone could play 1,403 games on-line since lock-down - all at time limits which we play in the KCC online meeting every Thursday, without playing a single one of those games with his "mates". But not this one. No, I won't hear a word said against the man. But only because I'm abusing him so loudly myself, I can't hear what anyone else is saying.
There are plenty of other time-controls/variants available on Lichess, but as I don't have anything to do with them myself, I regard them as somewhat irrelevant, but for the sake of good order, here's an aggregated assessment of activity at slow play and chess variants:-
Matt 335
Jude 102
Joshua 68
Billy 29
Ben 8
Bernard R 5
Lionel 1
And in case you are interested, the overall winner in terms of games played, is - as you'd expect since he's been first in three of the categories - Matt, with 8,365, which is almost double of his closest challenger, Paul (4,511), while the bronze medal goes to Jude (3,641).
Interesting as this all is (and it is interesting, isn't it?), what we really need to know is how much time we have all wasted, I mean spent, playing chess on-line? Well, we're in luck, because I've got those very numbers. And here they are:-
Matt 54 Days 16 Hours
Roy 11 Days 4 Hours
Mark 10 Days 17 Hours
Paul 10 Days 16 Hours
Bernard R 7 Days 11 Hours
Jude 7 Days 0 Hours
Joshua 5 Days 5 Hours
Lionel 5 Days 0 Hours
Algis 3 Days 5 Hours
Ben 3 Days 4 Hours
Billy 1 Day 15 Hours
Bernard C 18 Hours
Andy B 15 Hours
Phil 1 Hour
Noah 1 Hour
So, Matt seems to be the biggest time-waster by far ……… but is he?? He has been a member of Lichess for over 4 years, so he's averaging something like 12 days per year playing chess on that platform. Whereas Roy has been a member for less than three months, so he's averaging close to 50 days a year on Lichess! I knew there wasn't much to do in Fen End, but that's plain ridiculous. As is the fact that Dave hasn't spent a single second playing even one game of chess since he registered with Lichess!
But leaving Dave out of this, in honour of all the precious time the rest of us have "wasted" playing the greatest game ever invented, let's finish with the incomparable Nobel Prize winner, Mr Bob Dylan. (And if you don't like the music, you can enjoy a ride on the Metropolitan Line to Northwood.) After which I'm off for a few blitz games on chess.com (just so it doesn't look as if I've wasted any more time!)
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