Stagnation creeps up on us whenever we fail to compete. Chess was not that seriously affected during the Covid-19 closures. We turned our attention to playing the game online, and actually, I share the unproven view that over the past three years, the game enjoyed an increased following worldwide. Especially since the airing of the Netflix series, “The Queen’s Gambit”. However, we would only know numbers when an accredited survey is undertaken to prove or disprove what many of us suppose to be true. An estimate puts the number of people who play chess at 800 million. Whatever the figure is, chess is undeniably among the most popular sports in the world now, and perhaps in the past also.
