Online chess academy for budding players on the anvil

There may soon be an online chess academy, and they will be able to get lessons from world champion Vishwanathan Anand.

There is good news for budding chess players in India. There may soon be an online chess academy, and they will be able to get lessons from world champion Vishwanathan Anand.

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"We are in discussion with our brand ambassador Anand and we may soon have an online chess academy with Anand at the helm of affairs," Arun Varma, general manager of NIIT, said in the Capital on Thursday.

The NIIT-sponsored Anand, in the first experiment of its kind, played simultaneously against opponents in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata from the NIIT Imperia Centre for Advanced Learning in Kolkata.

"It feels great to chat and play with friends across the country using NIIT Imperia's technology, which seems to make distances disappear due to high level of interactivity," he said during an online interactive session.

"I would love to use this medium to reach out to chess enthusiasts across the country," added Anand.

NIIT Imperia used its innovative 'Synchronous Learning' technology to connect Anand via the Internet with chess enthusiasts, students and media representatives in all the six centres.

The unique learning system is also used by NIIT for its executive training programmes it has tied up with the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) at Ahmedabad, Kolkata and Indore.