Chess on Second Life

My attention was caught by a brief notice this week on Phil Dornbusch's blog about Chess on Second Life.

For those of you who don't know, I suspect most, Second Life is a virtual world on the Internet where people can live, as the name suggests, a second life. You can shop, build a house, start a business, go on holiday, and now it seems even follow chess.


I talk about Second Life when I speak to businesses about future directions for the Internet, and it usually meets with either guffaws or embarrassed faces in the audience. The potential is interesting though, there are several million members, you can make and lose money (it has it's own 'convertible' currency), some big business have a presence, and, apparently, Sweden is even going to open an embassy on the site.

The chess coverage, if my French is upto scratch, is the final of the French women's team championship and is being relayed online from a 3D reconstruction of the Palais du Luxembourg.

The French Chess Federation (FFE) has sponsorship from the BNP Paribas banking corporation. Their excellent chess website has details of the championship along with other news, and a host of excellently presented material for discovering and learning the game. How many other Federations can boast as clean an interface? All that remains is to learn how to read French!