PART 1 • The aftermath
public in the late 1990's eventually cooled. Stores went from carrying
a dozen or more chess programs to just one or two; these days it's not
unusual to not find a single chess program on the software racks in a “big
box” department store. Even the “specialty” market, which catered mainly
to “serious” chess players started drying up, with many of the once major
players (such as Chess Genius) falling by the wayside.
THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
The biggest change to chess has come from the Internet. Although
Internet chess had existed in various forms for years (I played my first
online games online using Power Chess or, occasionally, an IRC client as
far back as 1997), it really exploded as a phenomenon in the late 1990's
with the advent of Javascript and the increased popularity of the World
Wide Web; by the turn of the century literally dozens of Internet sites
offered online chess play (either “real time” or at correspondence time
controls) -- and the number has only increased since.
Today the Internet offers limitless opportunities for chess play with
thousands of players worldwide playing tens of thousands of chess games
each day. Some chess web sites offer free basic chess instruction, while
access to more advanced instruction might require a subscription fee.
Players can discuss chess on public message boards (though the “signal
to noise ratio” [the ratio of worthwhile discussion to useless polemics
such as trolling and flamewars] on such sites is open to debate).
Meanwhile some chess software vendors seem to have learned that
beginners and average players are looking for chess instruction which
goes beyond the traditional “paper book” form. An idea which was
started by a company I worked for in the early 1990's, that of computerbased chess instruction, has been taken up by many other programmers
and companies in the years since. Now a player can select from a huge
variety of instructional offerings.
As we've seen earlier in this chapter, improving chess players need
opportunities to play, opportunities to train and learn, and opportunities
to get feedback on their play. Chess King is the first (and best!) program
I've seen in many, many years to offer all three opportunities in a single
package. As you continue through the first part of this book, you'll learn
why and how proper use of a computer chess software program can
help you improve your chess play. Later, in Part Two, you'll learn about
the specific Chess King functions which will help you achieve your chess
goals.
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