ONLINE CHESS vs OVER-THE-BOARD CHESS Analysis:

Note: This article was originally published in Spanish several years ago. We now publish it in English as many topics and situations remain relevant, and the debate has only grown more intense.
ONLINE CHESS vs OVER-THE-BOARD CHESS
Analysis:
10 KEY ASPECTS AND COMPARISON BETWEEN ONE MODALITY AND THE OTHER.
For a long time I have intended to write a comparative article about online chess vs over-the-board chess. However, looking at the current objective situation, this comparison is not simple since we must take into account many aspects that are key when participating in a competition. Nonetheless, we will attempt this and we will see how the adventure unfolds:

1. Cost of participation:
   Online chess:

• The cost of participation is almost zero
• You can play completely free against the best players in America and the world continuously

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Over-the-board chess:

• Astronomically high participation costs, even in the lowest level tournaments, often with dirty equipment and plastic pieces
• Usually you must pay high registration fees, plus transportation, food, and accommodation costs
  If the tournament is higher level, such as a continental event or a high-level open like Gibraltar, things escalate even more and can total $1,000 to $3,000 for a single tournament.

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2. Short and medium term projection for the future:
   Online chess:

• The projection and development of online chess is following an exponential upward curve
• Every minute, 300 thousand online games are played, and many are team tournaments and others are individual tournaments with prizes. The future indicates that physical presence matters less; beyond chess, today our job source and social interaction is based on the ability to generate ideas and communicate those ideas to others.
  In summary, the future tells us: Sir, your physical presence does not matter, cover your face, stay at home, etc. The message is clear, but your ideas are welcome: share them online, we are interested, we need them, and we will pay you for them.
  Like it or not, that is the message we receive today from the world.
  Therefore, online chess, online commerce, online classes, online surveillance are the future and all face-to-face is part of a less sad past and it's better to admit it as soon as possible.

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Over-the-board chess:

• Going through a bleak time; there are no zonal, intercontinental events, travel is almost impossible, you must play wearing a mask... And in the future nothing seems to get better, unless over-the-board chess learns from online chess and gives us instant pairings and all its benefits. Mid-term things may improve but if it does not assimilate the ideas and advantages of online chess, it is hard to imagine it surviving as a serious long-term option.

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3. Economic returns:
   Online chess:

• There are plenty and varied tournaments with prizes, organized by different countries of the world and to play them you just have to click your mouse. Apart from that, there are team battles, with and without prizes.
• We have regular and constant events like the Katara Bullet Tournament and the titled tournaments in Lichess. All this only in Lichess, as other platforms also have their own events with prizes.
• Then there are team battles, with and without prizes, and many teams pay their players.
• The Lichess titled tournaments are held every two months, including a warm-up tournament also with prizes and, very importantly, OPEN for everyone.
• The Katara Bullet is annual and gives $3,000 to first place and $250 to number 15. In its last edition, 4,000 players competed, and it is considered the Bullet World Championship; it is also OPEN.
• The Chess.com titled tournaments are held weekly.
• The team battles are constant, and renowned teams on the Lichess platform like Chesslandia, and more recently others, are paying for each point in battle, hiring players, or the battles offer prizes.

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Over-the-board chess:

• Very few countries have regular tournaments with prizes or professional chess leagues.
  Even if you're in a country with many tournaments with good prizes, you also lose a lot of time traveling between tournaments, and you can't play more than 2 tournaments on the same day; in many cases, only one per day or per week. The big issue is that in an over-the-board event, you spend a lot of time and energy doing things that are not chess—traveling, eating, shopping, waiting for pairings, waiting for prizes, waiting for the arbiter's decision.
  With the pandemic and after, everything has only gotten worse, because besides traditional inconveniences, we add restrictions and sanitary measures.

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4. Tools for improvement:
   Online chess:

• You have unlimited tactics, technique, and endgame exercises
• You have analyzers and error detection after each game
• Loads of free and paid video material
• You can enter thematic tournaments, and play simuls with masters, in most cases for free
• You have 100 times more tournaments available, and potential very strong opponents accessible
• You can play a greater number of games, play more, lose more, and win more.

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Over-the-board chess:

• You may be able to attend in-person classes, almost always with a cost, or congresses, chess talks, etc., usually also with important costs or expenses
• There are almost no tournaments; the comparative proportion to online chess is one in-person tournament for every 10,000 online tournaments.

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5. Fair play:
   Online chess:

• It is quite or almost totally safe when the time controls have no increment, with profiles with clear names, old accounts, and many games played. The safest and also the most popular format is the 1+0 time control.
• Some factors we must avoid in serious online competitions that increase unfair play are:

1. Allowing anonymous accounts to compete. Obviously if nobody knows who you are, there are no real or serious penalties; the worst thing that can happen is your account gets closed, but you can make new ones. When you play under your name and FIDE identity, things are very different, and statistically, among verified accounts, there's much less risk of cheating—I'd say 10 times less than with an anonymous account.
2. Playing with time controls with increment or long formats, which allow consulting and choosing moves. In bullet, by contrast, you could consult moves with the cursor program, for example, but you don't have time to choose a slightly worse or intentionally bad move. So replicating program suggestions with the cursor will lead to having the account banned because Lichess algorithms (or any decent platform) will detect it and close the account.
   In long or increment formats, the assisted player may also be eventually detected, but closing the account will take much longer, since they have time and the ability to alternate between good moves and bad ones, playing parts of the game alone and getting help on a few key moves. Playing many games in a tournament completely solo and getting help only in a few key games, etc, etc...
   The assisted player can never play many tournaments or games, and has many problems competing in tournaments against the world's best players where their performance and statistics will be analyzed with much more rigor by the platform and other players. If they do, it can only be sporadically, and they are normally much better ranked globally in slower time controls than in bullet, hyper bullet, and ultra bullet.

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Over-the-board chess:
Many assume it is completely safe, but I can assure you it is not so with the current rules.
I consider blitz 3+2 almost free of assistance and safe, but in formats like rapid chess and especially classical chess, the possibility and impunity to get help is astonishing and total. In these "over-the-board" formats, you can easily leave the playing hall.
Greeting and interacting with hundreds of people in the room, who almost all have devices, there’s control among players but not with the public—mothers, fathers, friends, coaches, anyone can take pictures/screenshots of positions. We play with rules similar to those of 100 years ago...
This classical format must reduce the time controls... a lot, limit to 2 or 3 the breaks allowed from the table, enough with absent players, and of course, allow interactions during the game. To me it’s really absurd and out of place to use a moderate term... With the current and usual rules in tournaments, this classical "over-the-board absentee" chess makes very little sense and fair play guarantees definitely do not exist.

• There are neither guarantees nor fair play in arbiters and pairings; if in an online tournament the pairing takes 5 sec, in classical over-the-board it can take 10 hours—my feeling of fairness is 100 times greater when it takes 5 seconds. This doesn’t happen in over-the-board tournaments.
• In terms of speed, efficiency, and fairness in arbitration, my perception is that it is 100 times lower in all three items compared to the automatic online platform arbitration.

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6. Possibility and ease of instant information and widespread sharing with the community:
   Online chess:
   All games are automatically recorded and can be shared massively or selectively in seconds and a few clicks, and can also be shared on social networks.
   Tournament statistics, standings, and progression are also automatically recorded and ordered.
   In this area, online chess is almost unbeatable.

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Over-the-board chess:

In 99 percent of cases, there is no automatic recording, and frequently it depends on the player’s own notation, which comparatively is absurd because it distracts the player, makes noise, is almost always illegible, and is extremely primitive.
Tournament results are hard to find, and their availability depends on the will of arbiters and organizers. In most cases, that will does not exist, and games are lost like sand in the desert—the results and tournament progression often disappear easily if not as expected or desired by organizers. They may not report to ELO, and IM/GM norms may be lost because there are no automatisms—everything depends on people, and people fail more than computers and systems; and it's not just about mistakes, but also corruption, there may be intent, interest, omission, voluntary delay, etc.

7. Arbitration and regulations:
   Online chess:

• Instant arbitration and therefore clean... If pairings come out in 5 seconds or 3, you know nobody is thinking about the pairings and thus they follow preset criteria and algorithms. If the pairing does not come out instantly, you feel someone is thinking about pairings.
• The system prevents all kinds of conflicts, illegal moves, pieces in multiple squares, etc, etc... I’d say it’s almost perfect, arbitration online is instant, too... Lichess’ system above all, but also Chess.com or similar, is 100 times better, faster, and more just than the best over-the-board chess arbiter in the world.
• There’s a wide variety of formats: Swiss, arenas, team battles—not to mention chess variants offered by online platforms.
• I think arena tournaments are fairer and more attractive to the public than the Swiss system.

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Over-the-board chess:

• The rules are ambiguous and change constantly; in classical chess, it is way too easy to get help during games, in practice it's allowed to get up and greet/talk to anyone, anywhere.
  Nobody guarantees absence of disturbing noises, pairings take forever and can be done in any manner.
  Pairings and tiebreaks can be altered easily and without punishment.
  Rivals or arbiters can talk to you during the game, which could never happen online and constitutes a serious interruption of the intense concentration one has during the game or competition.
  Practically there are only Swiss tournaments; arena and team battle formats do not exist or are not feasible to organize.

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8. Playing conditions and local infrastructure: boards, pieces, tables, clocks, air conditioning, hygiene, silence, sanitary conditions.
   Online chess:
   You can design them according to your own comfort, and they can be ideal if you put in the effort to achieve it.
   The Lichess platform, for example, is designed at the highest technological level and is in constant development, improvement, and evolution.

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Over-the-board chess:

99 percent of playing halls do not meet the conditions necessary for serious competition—non-air-conditioned halls, heat/cold, plastic and cardboard pieces. Scarce and poor restrooms, inadequate chairs, are most frequent in in-person events.
The remaining 1 percent that does meet minimum standards is the exception confirming the rule.
Crowding, and wearing masks, makes the experience even more uncomfortable if possible.
Finally, when you play over-the-board chess, you spend much time doing things that aren't chess:
-Transporting yourself—not chess
-Talking and greeting people or your rival—maybe pleasant, maybe not, but definitely not chess
-Waiting for pairings—not chess
-Listening to opening speeches—not chess
-Writing your moves on a scoresheet—not chess
-Booking hotel rooms and flights—not chess
-Listening to thousands of conversations between others in the hall before, during, and after the game—not chess
-And finally, sitting while your rival gets up with all the time in the world, plus the increment, and can carry out all kinds of indefinite interactions—neither chess nor any sport.

9. Possibility and ease to face players of different levels and countries including the world elite:
   Online chess:
   -You can play 24/7 against players from all over the world and all levels
   -You can play tournaments 24/7
   -You can play tournaments with prizes every day
   -You can participate in tournaments or challenges against GMs, IMs, and the best players in the world constantly and repeatedly, even during the same day
   -You can completely choose the pace and level of each tournament you want to play according to your aspirations and comfort

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Over-the-board chess:

-There are some countries, often Spain and USA, for example
-In most countries, tournaments (except 1 or 2 per year) only allow you to face local players and at a local level; GM/IM participation is scarce in tournaments. World top players are basically never present, much less can you play them.

10. Instant statistical recording of games, automatic annotation, visualization and permanence of games, and instant analysis capability of games
    Online chess:
    -All tournament games are instantly recorded and available to everyone, with no cost and no delay
    -All tournament results, numbers, and statistics are always available, instantly
    -Infinite statistics are also available automatically
    -ELO and your world ranking in each format moves and is visible to everyone, instantly

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Over-the-board chess:

-Recording is up to the players themselves, writing the game down by hand! 1 percent of events have DGT boards for live transmission, move and game recording, and when that happens, only a few boards can be followed live from anywhere in the world.
-ELO calculation, world and national ranking... only moves monthly
CONCLUSION:
Online chess, above all on the Lichess platform, has exploded and seems unstoppable; it should polish a few details and make some adjustments:

1. Do away with anonymous accounts or reduce them to only non-ELO, non-tournament point games
2. Drive competitions toward faster, no-increment formats, which are more attractive to the public and cleaner for players.
   Beyond these details, I conclude the future is clearly digital and online, not just in chess.

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Current over-the-board chess, in its present state and version, is expiring, and its only rescue is to digitize, to become part of this new century; all current instant technology must be incorporated, and moreover, deep and numerous regulatory changes are required, which I will address in future articles. If these changes happen, as I hope, both modalities can coexist and increase options for players, organizers, and the community.
Glad to share my ideas and open a healthy debate,
Sincerely,
IM Daniel Barria Zuñiga
https://critmint-orchard.org/@/manitodeplomo]