The wait for the much-anticipated World chess championship is almost over but the anxiety of the organisers will last a bit longer.
The clash, involving World champion Viswanathan Anand and World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen, is set to register a record number of ‘hits’ on the internet this week. The organisers are expecting around a million hits on Saturday when the Norwegian makes the first move.
Wiser after the embarrassing experience of the servers crashing due to unprecedented traffic during the Candidates Tournament in London earlier this year, the World Chess Federation (FIDE) now relies on the All India Chess Federation (AICF) to redeem its reputation.
“We are not taking any chances,” said a chastened AICF CEO Bharat Singh Chauhan and continued, “We are using a fair number of servers to provide uninterrupted services to those following the games on the net.”
The organisers have engaged three FIDE servers from Turkey and two from Amazon.com. This is in addition to the home servers and one from Russia.
Elaborating on the coverage, Chauhan said, “We have a way of distributing the traffic in such a way that no server gets congested.
“We have a separate server for youtube, with which we have signed an agreement.
“The webcast, live-games as well as live pictures from the playing hall will be beamed to the followers of the game for the first time in any World championship match.”
The hits, on any match-day, are expected to cross the million-mark.
“We are ready for two million hits,” said Chauhan, beaming with confidence, and with a silent prayer.
