Blog GilaChess: opinions

What the hell is Tornelo?

By GilaChess - September 27, 2021

Ok this post is about my ignorance about things happening in the chess world today so please forgive me for this katak bawah tempurung post.

Ok I admit Gila Chess has not been Gila about chess throughout the pandemic.

Not even remotely intrerested in any tournaments, especially with tons of online tournaments for desperate chess players who cannot play over the board anymore. I was already playing on an online platform in Starcraft and Chess it seems is just trying to catch up. It's still light years behind. What I mean is that Chess had really poor features to deter cheating etc.

So why am I interested now?

Although I have all but given up playing chess competitively, I have not given up other aspects of chess like taking pictures, blogging about chess tournaments, chess broadcasting etc. I am also most interested in building online chess servers like Lichess where players can play on the web.

Big market

The total registered FIDE rated players in the world is abut 170,000. The fact that tournaments take place everyday around the world makes Chess one of the most popular board games in the world. So leveraging services to provide tournament play online is indeed can be profitable if not lucrative if done correctly.

Also, with the pandemic likely to last very long, normal OTB play is going to be pretty rare and if it comes back the numbers will be limited as well as so many stringent measures making it very different from what we are used to. This means the current certified OTB Arbiters are out of the job and Tornelo is the logical choice to level up and move on to for this group of people.

What I do know

From what I've heard and Googled about Tornelo, it's a platform for online tournaments. To be fair I did hear about Tornelo thru mentions in Facebook but I was put off by it because it also offered expensive courses to certify people who can run Tornelo tournaments. It felt like another for money fiasco to get certified by paying exhorbitant amounts but getting really poor qualified / trained people. But that's of course unfair to judge without evidence but it has happened too often where chess is concerned so I just assumed it is the same here.

Give Tornelo a chance?

So upon inspection I see that there is no evidence of any thing bad about Tornelo so I will give it the benefit of the doubt.

What I like

is the platform and objectives of Tornelo. They are trying to make online play as close as possible to over the board play which is a huge undertaking and will be great if can be achieved seeing how cheating is a big problem in chess. Over the board chess cheating is a big problem even before the pandameic and the problem is multiplied by a huge factor via online play.