Intensity of championship and ease of watching the game online is bringing it to a wider audience

Not since the 1972 cold war showdown between the US grandmaster Bobby Fischer and his Russian rival Boris Spassky has chess been so high profile.

This week’s tie-break, which saw the world No 1, 27-year-old Magnus Carlsen from Norway, beat the US challenger, Fabiano Caruana, 26, has sent both heart rates and interest in the game soaring, according to aficionados.

“We’ve seen a lot more interest in school chess. A lot more people phoning up for lessons. A lot more inquiries online,” said Malcolm Pein, the chief executive of the charity Chess in Schools and Communities (CSC), which has seen increased web traffic.

There was increased foot traffic too, at the Baker Street chess store in London run by Pein, a chess international master and director of international chess at the English Chess Federation.

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“People were coming in off the street to watch it on the screen. There is definitely a mini-boom going on.”

Chess is also big on the internet and growing, with chess move taking just four bytes of data. “It was made for the internet,” said Pein. “You can play chess with anyone, anywhere in the world, 24 hours a day.”

Research suggests at least half a million games are going on at any one time.

But it was the intensity of the Carlsen v Caruana world championship, held in London over three weeks, that gripped an audience drawn by the prospect of sudden death by blitz or armageddon – evocatively named speed chess games – after 12 consecutive draws.

In the end, Carlsen retained his title when the games, which can last for seven or eight hours, were set at 25 minutes, causing Caruana to lose three-nil in a playoff.

“So we didn’t get to armageddon. It would have been mildly sacrilegious if we had: a bit like settling the world cup final with a game of keepy-uppy, because, frankly, it’s that random,” said Pein.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Carlsen, left, with the world championship trophy. Photograph: Nicky J Sims/Getty Images for Kaspersky Lab

Afterwards, Carlsen went for a quiet pint in a pub near the championship venue in Holborn. Coincidently, members of Wanstead and Woodford’s chess club also nipped in following their London Chess League Wednesday night game in a nearby hotel. To their delight, Carlsen joined them and posed for photos, which they posted to their website.

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Mark Murrell, tournament secretary for Wanstead and Woodford chess club, said six members had been having a drink in the Penderel’s Oak on High Holborn on Wednesday evening when they looked up and suddenly saw Carlsen quietly enjoying a pint and winding down after the championships. “It was a surprise, more than anything else, seeing him mixing with the hoi polloi.

“We went over and he was very engaging and interested in what we were doing chess- wise. It was just one of those lovely moments. It’s not every day in any sport you get to rub shoulders with a world champion, especially in a social context.”

“They just nipped into the boozer after their match, and there he was. Having a pint. It’s unbelievable,” said Mark Rivlin, the secretary of Hackney chess club, who was also playing that night.

Hackney chess club has 80 members, playing in seven teams “from very young to quite old” and reflecting “the diversity of our community in Hackney”, said Rivlin. Its members were watching the championship “avidly at work, when they shouldn’t have been, as was I”, he added. “A lot of non-chess players have been interested, including friends of mine.”

He predicted it would take time for the trickle-down effect. “There is interest. But Magnus Carlsen can still walk into a pub and no one will recognise him unless they are chess players,” he said.

Rivlin would like celebrities and those in the public eye with an interest in chess to join clubs to attract others. He cites the October match between Carlsen and the Liverpool and England footballer Trent Alexander Arnold. “Fair enough, Magnus obviously massacred him on the board,” he said.

The London Chess League now has divisions for players of lower ability to pull in less experienced, post-beginner players. “This is chess’s moment. There is no doubt about it. Chess is now cool. There is a resurgence and we we need to capitalise on that,” he said.

Pein believes its success will continue to grow because of how easy it is to watch it on the internet. “You can tell a game of chess better than you can football on Sky Sport,” he said. Computers, watching in real time, can immediately detect a blunder, with an onscreen bar rising or falling to highlight crucial mistakes. Flashing arrows point out obvious moves.

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The chess industry is even experimenting with heart monitors, following the player’s pulse rate and showing it through onscreen graphics. “Some of the pulse rates are absolutely terrifying. I mean, it’s actually a miracle that some chess players don’t expire on the spot, frankly,” Pein said.

“There are so many aspects to the game you can see and understand, even if you don’t know the rules that well. It’s so much easier to learn now, because you can just learn off your phone.”

CSC is doing its part to bring the game to a wider audience, encouraging pupils at mainly inner-city state schools to take it up. “Every private school has a chess club, but only a very small minority of state schools do,” said Pein.

“We send people in to teach it as a classroom subject. That way, we get more girls playing, rather than having a club, where you get the stereotypical problem of ‘oh, it’s a boy’s game’.

“If you teach chess in the classroom, then as many girls as boys are playing. And the best player can be a girl, quite often. And why not?”