How tech and affordable internet helped make India a chess powerhouse

From watching a game on a smartphone to playing a favourite chess opening using a database, modern tech and affordable internet have helped India produce one chess prodigy after another

This is the second in a two-part series on chess in India. You can read part 1 here.

Back in the 1920s, chess world champion Jose Raoul Capablanca said, "You will have to lose hundreds of games before you become a good player." In the era before online chess, electronic databases and silicon engines, simply playing a hundred games (win or lose) took a week or more. Moreover, except for residents of Moscow, Leningrad or somewhere else with many strong players, the quality of opposition could be dodgy.

Nowadays, it takes less than three hours to play a hundred