Chess isn’t a game which many people wouldn’t normally associated with gambling.
Chess is for nerds, right? The tortured geniuses hiding away in their bedrooms to avoid an uncaring world which simply doesn’t understand — Roulette, Craps, BlackJack and Poker, now they’re for the ‘beautiful people’ be it in swish casinos in Monte Carlo or semi-legal speakeasy’s in frontier towns in the old West, right?
Well, like all stereotypes, whilst there are grains of truths in the origins of the perception, there are enough exceptions and contrary evidence to mean the above is a very simplistic view of the place of Chess in society (and gambling for that matter!).
Naturally we don’t have the scope to go into the rules of Chess in an article of this length, still less the finer points of strategy.
But we do want to highlight the fact that you can play Chess for money…well, kind of.
Of course there’s nothing to stop you being a Chess ‘hustler’; you could arrange a competition with your friends, and make things interesting with having money riding on it, and indeed people do do that.
However, when it comes to online gaming there’s less scope, simply because it’s hard to ensure the proper rules are adhered to.
For instance, there are Chess programs out there which players can make good use of simply by feeding their opponent’s moves in to give them the optimum move in response.
This would skew gaming for money online in a way that isn’t possible with other games (online casinos have pretty sophisticated security in place which can detect cheating software).
So how can you play Chess for money?
The other obvious choice is to bet money on professional games.
The international circuit has a huge following in much the same way as the World Series of Poker and other gaming tournaments, and many top matches are televised.
Paddy Power is one casino that offers Chess betting.
This might come as no surprise — the Paddies are noted for daring to offer odds where Angels fear to tread, if that’s not mixing metaphors.
For instance there is due to be a World Championship match on 5 November, between the reigning world champion and world number one, the 24-year-old Magnus Carlsen from Norway and Viswanathan ‘Vishy’ Anand, an Indian player over 20 years Carlsen’s senior.
At the time of writing, if you play with Paddy Power, Carlsen is unsurprisingly favorite at 1:4, with odds of 5:2 on Anand.
We’re guessing anyone with the mental capacity to follow professional Chess will be able to figure out the potential payout on those odds; naturally you’d have to bet fairly large on Carlsen to get any kind of return, whereas if there was an upset and Anand won, a 100 bet would return you 350 (including your stake).
Paddy Power have something of a King of Welcome Bonuses as an opening gambit, incidentally; 100% up to 200, plus 5 to play with for free, and with a vast array of betting options, it won’t take long to find something to your liking.
That being said, we plan to keep an eye on Chess betting and see if more online casinos follow Paddy Power’s lead — there really is plenty of potential for betting wins on the game, it’s never dull, and you’ll expand your intellect in a way that can’t really be said of slots!