Welcome to the World Chess Championship! If you are a chess fan, you will have a thrilling November! If you are just discovering chess, who has never visited or followed the Match and you do not know a Scholar’s Mate from a Sicilian Defense*, don’t worry. The Match is going to be exciting for everyone and you will likely have a great time following the adventure.

A little background might help. Chess is a 1500-year-old game that was invented in what is modern-day India. (The original game had some differences, like elephants instead of bishops and not all of the pieces moved the same way, but those are just details). The game spread through Persia (modern-day Iran), before entering Europe through the Iberian Peninsula sometime in the 9th century. From there, the game spread far and wide, soon becoming the most popular in Europe and even becoming part of the chivalric code in some countries (in other words, a real knight had to demonstrate prowess in chess). The current rules of the game were codified at the end of the 15th century in books written in Spain and Italy.

Today, Yougov, the polling and research company, estimates that about 600 million people know how to play the game and chess apps have been downloaded more than one billion times. Chess has made the transition from ancient “game of kings” to modern fixture of the Internet-age seamlessly. Indeed, as chess lends itself to being played on the Internet, there are now many Internet sites where people play regularly, day and night. In short, the game is more popular than ever.

Further proof of how the Internet has affected chess is that the current world champion, Magnus Carlsen, 30, is from Norway, a country with little chess tradition. But, growing up, Carlsen always had access to competition, which allowed him to rapidly perfect his skills. He became a grandmaster, the highest title awarded by the World Chess Federation, at 13 — one of the youngest ever.

Carlsen’s challenger, Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia, is also a product of the Internet age. He is 31 and learned to play while growing up in Bryansk. Nepomniachtchi has the best score against Carlsen of all people and therefore is a very worthy challenger.

Carlsen and Nepomniachtchi are currently ranked Nos. 1 and 4, respectively, in the world. So, the upcoming match will be the chess world’s version of Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier. So let's watch together -- sign up to the Telegram channel with the latest news, alerts and results from the match the moment they happen.