Home Chess News New Chess Technology: idChess – The Platform for Recognizing & Broadcasting Chess Games!

New Chess Technology: idChess – The Platform for Recognizing & Broadcasting Chess Games!

by Ogunsiku Babatunde
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All around the globe (in chess tournaments), tripods with smartphones attached to tables are starting to appear. This is idChess, an innovative product that allows you to broadcast chess games in real time using only a mobile phone with the app.

Offline chess is an exciting activity, however, the problem of offline chess is the lack of opportunity for fans to support chess players. Imagine how hard it is for parents to wait agonizingly for hours at tournaments, not even understanding what is happening in their child’s game! idChess solves the problem of broadcasting games to fans, enabling mass digitization and broadcasting of games for a wide audience.

For now idChess is used in Russia, India, Turkey, Armenia and a number of African countries. Firstly, it was introduced to the world chess community at the (blitz tournament during the) side events of the 44th Chess Olympiad in Chennai.

idChess in India.

How it works:

idChess is an AI-driven mobile application. It recognizes chess moves during a game, records them in the form of chess notations, and saves them on the smartphone. idChess digitize games in real time, which can be used to broadcast games to a wide audience. Furthermore, fans can get a link to the broadcast and open it on their phones or laptops.

idChess uses computer vision and machine learning technologies. idChess algorithms are able to take into account, many complex factors that may arise during the game, e.g., the fall of a chess piece, players’ hands blocking the board, or shadows from the hands.

Start recording

To record games, you need only a smartphone with the idChess app and a tripod for attaching the smartphone above the chessboard.

To start using the application, perform three simple steps:

  1. Attach the tripod to the table where the chessboard is.
  2. Fix the smartphone on the tripod with the screen facing up so that the camera is pointed at the chessboard, and the entire playing field falls into the lens (Green signifies Go!).
  3. Run the app, find the green, and start recording.

After completing the game, it will be saved in the app library in pgn or gif format, familiar to chess players. You can send the game to your coach or share it on social networks.

idChess for tournament organizers

idChess has a tournament version (live.idchess.com) specially developed for tournament organizers. Phones with the idChess app connect to the admin panel and form a tournament grid with online diagrams of players’ boards. The tournament version of idChess allows you to:

  • Create a tournament. All devices with the idChess app can connect to tournament.
  • Share a link to the tournament (fans can use the link to watch the entire tournament or a specific board).
  • Organize convenient fan zones at competitions (the broadcast can be displayed on screens, and fans can watch games in real time).
  • Save tournament games in PGN format.
  • Save played games to your smartphone and share them in pgn and gif formats in messengers, by e-mail or on social networks.

The admin panel has a built-in function for editing PGN files, in which the organizer, where appropriate, can delete or add necessary moves. idChess allows you to integrate with specialized chess results servers (Chess-results.com, Swiss-Manager) and a chess clock.

Tournament organizers can upload the draw of the tournament, lists of participants with chessresults.com or chessresults.ru to the tournament version of idChess. This significantly speeds up the setup of the tournament grid for broadcast.

idChess for Fans

Before idChess, the only development that made it possible to create broadcasts of chess games approved by FIDE was DGT electronic boards. However, due to their high cost and complexity of installation, not everyone can use (even one) DGT board. idChess has become the first mass solution that allowed organizing broadcasts even at small children’s tournaments in chess schools.

For example, in the Botvinnik Team Cup in Moscow, games were broadcast from more than a hundred chess boards. Now we are witnessing how chess is becoming a sport accessible to fans. Active fans are the best support groups for any sportsman! Since 2021, the Pedagogical Chess Union has been using idChess in mass tournaments with over 600 participants!

idChess for Chess Federations

idChess unites the chess community. For chess players it is a great opportunity to see all the tournaments played with idChess in one place. There is a tournament page in the mobile app, which consists of all the games, the played ones, the current ones and the future ones. The city of the tournament does not matter much, users can easily find the right tournament and join in watching it.

Ghana Chess Federation using idChess!

For the chess federation, idChess is opening the possibility of creating a common broadcast platform. No games from tournaments will be lost. Even if the federation has several tournaments in one day in different areas, there is no problem. All games from tournaments can easily be integrated on the chess federation’s website or saved on the cloud, for future use.

Learn to play better with idChess!

The best game analysis for a beginning player is to reconstruct the game on the board according to chess notation. idChess saves you from having to do double work and allows you to go straight to viewing the game on the chess diagram. It is convenient to track your progress in a single library of saved games. Records will not be lost there, and you can return to the game at any time.

This is especially true for children’s tournaments among participants of primary school age, as well as for blitz and rapid tournaments, where the recording of games by players is not provided by the rules. In addition, idChess is compact and convenient to take with you to the game.

idChess for you!

You can try idChess yourself! All you need to do is download the idChess app from Google Play store or the App Store.

The special promo code AFRICACHESS10 will give you a 10% discount for the full access to all functions if you buy it on the website idchess.com.

6 steps to buy idChess

  • Step 1 – Go to idchess.com
  • Step 2 – Select a subscription (for a month or a year).
  • Step 3 – Enter the promo code.
  • Step 4 – Pay for the subscription, you will receive a login and password by mail, under which you need to enter the application.
  • Step 5 – Download the application and log in to the application using the login and password that was sent to you in the letter.
  • Step 6 – Done! Digitize and broadcast your games!

Download idChess Today and thank us later! Apart from the digitization and broadcasting of games, there are various other benefits of using the app.

Check it out today!

Download on iOS

Download on Android

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