Saturday, May 28, 2011

Letter to the editor III

The latest instalment of Every Picture Tells a Story, will appear next week. In the meantime, we interrupt our schedules to bring you news that 30 years ago today, an amateur chesser was sitting down to put pen to paper. I wonder if he is still with us, and, if so, what he makes of the game today.



FROM:
CHESS
Volume 46, Nos. 855-856
June 1981
p. 75


WHAT WE NEED (?)

Dear Ed. and fellow readers of CHESS.

What modern British chess really needs, are

1. A residential chess, holiday and week-end centre, for keen chess players of all ages.

It should have really good facilities.
A games shop.
Computer chess.
Friendly and tournament games.
Simultaneous chess.
Human chess, played on a giant chess-board, preferably inside a hall, because of our uncertain weather.

There's nothing quite like acting out a game for some really good chess fun.

Why human chess has tended to die out, is the fact that so many games were drawn with only the two kings left, so that that the crowd's interest dwindled. Something should have been done before it largely died out, for it can be quite exciting to watch, almost as exciting as an actual battle, which of course it is supposed to be.

I believe Human Chess is still played on the continent, and of course in Eastern Bloc countries, where chess is almost as popular as football.


2. Do we need to modernize chess? I think we do; it would look something like this:
A-Bomber 9 pts
Tank 5 pts
Missile 3 pts
Strike aircraft 3 pts
Infantry 1 pt
King ? 
The rules of the game, would of course remain the same. But it would look more modern, and one might easily be able to plan the tactics of one's game better, who knows?

I'd be interested to hear what other readers think of these ideas.


3. Another idea would be to have a Western World Championship, with the U.S.S.R excluded, to give players in the west something to aim at.

One might argue that this wouldn't be be quite fair.

On the other hand if we had what we considered to be our world champion, it might stir up more enthusiasm among people, to learn the game. Such was witnessed in 1972, when for a while the west really did have a world champion.

Anyway, that's all of my ideas for the moment.

BOB FLETCHER
Byfleet, 28 May 1981








Letter to the editor
Letter to the editor II


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is a lot of Chess at Weekends,but what about Weekday.
I do play Chess at Weekends, but I like to spend Weekends with my family and I follow Sport at the Weekend.
In my opinion a nice tournament would be 2 games Monday,Tuesday and Wednesday.
Club players and others, who never play Chess at the Weekend may make the effort to play.

Also, Snooker to me is good, partly because it has Colour (the balls).
What about some more colour in Chess. I would like to see colourful Chess pieces,
e.g. White has a light colour for each piece, white, pale yellow, cream,lemon etc and Black has a dark colour for each piece, black, brown, dark blue and so on.
An idea anyway.


George

Jonathan B said...

I think I'd find colourful chess pieces a bit weird George. Perhaps it's something you'd get used to though.

As for chess during the week, e2-e4 are running a 9-round weekday chess tournament in August

Sunningdale International

although it does run into the weekend too.