India, July 3 -- After the World Teams Rapid and Blitz Championship in Hong Kong two weeks ago, Nihal Sarin made the unusual decision to not travel back home to Kerala. Instead, he flew to Mumbai to play the 2026 Bullet Chess Championship, online, from his manager's home and a gaming facility, eventually becoming the first Indian to win the title.

The idea behind playing from Mumbai, where Chess.com has a server, was to take advantage of high-performance hardware, faster internet speeds and lower latency - the delay in data transmission measured in milliseconds, between device and server.

Mumbai offered something he did not have back home. S8UL, the esports and gaming content organisation Nihal represented at last year's Esports World C...