Ssshhh! Chess and the challenges of playing in front of a live audience | Chess News
NEW DELHI: Have you ever stepped into the playing hall of a chess tournament? The atmosphere feels almost sacred. A vast space, rows of tables stretching endlessly with chessboards and pieces in their eternal black-and-white standoff. Players sit hunched, brows furrowed, as though the weight of the world rests on each move. The hush is so thick that the softest tap on a clock echoes like a drumbeat. Such was the scene at a recent grandmaster chess tournament in the capital.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!Big names were missing but there was no shortage of intensity. No audience is permitted once the play begins and only the media is allowed to have phones, strictly on silent mode. Even a murmur attracts the sharp glance of an arbiter and makes you think twice before opening the mouth again. Here, silence isn’t just etiquette but the basic expectation.However, halfway across the world, a chess event unfolded in a completely different setting.In Las Vegas, at the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam, spectators were allowed to witness the action live for the first time last month.Fans in the arena had access to live commentary via headsets and the infamous evaluation bar on the screen fixed in front of the sitting area, while players donned noise-cancelling headphones to block the din.
Spectators could listen to live commentary via headsets (Photo by Stev Bongage for Freestyle Chess)
For the first time, checkmates-in-waiting and blunders-in-making were visible to the live audience. And they roared at every wrong move like at a boxing match.The drama thrilled audiences but riled players. American GM Fabiano Caruana, losing to his compatriot Hikaru Nakamura, fired quick shots.“In the match, I started to get very annoyed at the whole tournament… Not to make excuses, but I mean, the spectators are basically just yelling when we have five seconds each. Hikaru was crushing me and then, he probably had some mating chances, but it wasn’t easy. He had 5 seconds. He went back with the queen. I was back in the game. And around this moment there was just yelling, I mean like very loud yelling. I’m not exaggerating at all. It was just screaming in the audience and you can’t play like that with five seconds,” he said. “So we both blundered. I could basically have mated him and also won his queen on two different occasions. It just leaves a bad taste.”His frustration laid bare a problem chess hasn’t yet solved: Can the game truly be played with a live audience?Just weeks back, 19-year-old Divya Deshmukh won the Women’s World Cup in Batumi, Georgia.But her biggest triumph happened in front of an empty hall, sans any live spectators. Even her family and Indian team officials were asked to leave because of FIDE’s anti-cheating rules.“If spectators make noise and all, I would not play as I would do when there are no spectators. I can understand it could be very disturbing,” GM Pranav V tells TimesofIndia.com.After Freestyle Chess, players at the 2025 eSports World Cup too wore noise-cancelling headphones. Yet, doubts remain over whether they can really work at the top level.“I am not sure if these headphones can block everything. I feel chess is still not ready for live spectators now,” Pranav, now 18, added.20-year-old Rohith Krishna S, who recently became India’s 89th GM, feels time format could be the deciding factor.“Yeah, I mean, as a spectator myself, I watch only some chess games. For example, I like (to watch) rapid games (more than any other formats),” he admitted.“I feel chess can become (more spectator-friendly) like if they have the faster time controls like rapid and blitz, but the classical format may not be a spectator-friendly one because it’s just too long.”And yet, the allure of chess as a spectator sport is undeniable as streaming platforms have brought millions of young fans into the fold, hungry for high-stakes drama, quick tactical fireworks and, yes, the emotional rollercoaster of a crowd reacting in real time.The catch? The very precision and poise that make grandmasters exceptional can crumble at the slightest distraction.Where even the drop of a pin can tilt concentration, how do you reconcile the monk-like demands of play with the carnival atmosphere fans crave? As GM Pranav summed it up bluntly: “Chess is difficult to play with live audience.”Until it isn’t, the silence of the hall may continue to be its truest soundtrack.
