Richard James On Junior Chess: 3. It's Good For Kids, Isn't It

This is the third in a series of guest posts by Richard James. If you haven't already read the first two, you'll find them here and here (or just scroll down).

Richard James on Junior Chess

5. Chess makes children smarter

There are a number of studies in the public domain which claim that ‘chess is good for you’, and these are often used as a means of justifying chess in schools. But, quite apart from the dubious methodology of many of these studies (I don’t know of any genuine ‘double blind’ chess studies in which neither the children nor the teachers were aware that they were part of the study) they claim to demonstrate the benefits of learning and studying chess, not specifically of playing chess. Nor do I know of any studies which followed up the students after a few years to discover whether the academic benefits were temporary or permanent, or considered whether the improvement was caused by the teacher or the subject. Nor do I know of any studies that compared chess with other games or activities in terms of academic benefit.

Anecdotal evidence from Twickenham Preparatory School suggests that strategy games, generally, are beneficial, but that chess is not the best choice for everyone. So perhaps schools who want to use chess to make children smarter should instead consider using a wider range of strategy games rather than just chess.

If you stop and think about it, it makes no sense to start a chess club for children who have been taught to play in a non-methodological way because a study claimed that children who have been taught chess methodologically showed academic improvement. The Kasparov Chess Foundation claims that “if taught correctly, chess can be a student’s driving force, helping him/her in every aspect of critical thinking development”. Note the words ‘if taught correctly’. Most children in the UK learn the moves in half an hour or so from a family member or friend. The people who run the Steps Method, for instance, would, I suspect, claim that this is not the correct way to teach chess.

In spite of my reservations about the studies, I suspect that, in some cases, teaching chess in a step by step way can be academically beneficial but it’s not what we’re doing here in the UK at the moment. I would also guess that you’d see more academic improvement in deprived areas than you would in affluent areas where many children are already academically successful, but it is probably in the more affluent areas where you will find more children who are potentially strong players. So before you decide on your chess policy you have to think about what exactly you’re trying to achieve.

I’ve suspected for a long time that these studies are actually counter-productive in that they give the wrong idea about chess and encourage schools and parents to teach their children chess for the wrong reasons. In an affluent, predominately middle-class area such as Richmond, parents are increasingly obsessed with their children’s academic success. They will sign their children up for the school chess club because they think they’ll gain a few IQ points which might help them pass the entrance exams for the secondary school of their choice, but won’t want to do any more than this because the time spent on chess might hamper their chances of academic success. When they’ve got all they can from the game they’ll withdraw their children from the chess club.

One other thing: a lot is said about the perceived academic benefits of chess. There are also considerable social benefits as well. We should be promoting the social as well as the academic benefits when trying to sell chess to parents and teachers. And, perhaps more than that, we should be promoting chess as a fantastic game for older children and adults, but one at which younger children can, in certain circumstances, excel. I really don’t think it’s a good idea to draw absurd conclusions from dubious studies as a way of promoting chess in schools – if indeed that’s what we should be doing. And, as I spent 15 years working for an organisation promoting chess in schools in that way, I’ve been there and done that.

Proposition 5: Learning chess in a methodological way may in some circumstances have a beneficial effect on some children.

6. Chess is a fun game for young children

Well yes, up to a point chess is a fun game for young children. I have no objection at all to children having fun playing games – indeed it’s an integral part of growing up. There are several reasons why I think chess is not the best game to be used for that purpose, and why it is not the best way to use chess, but it’s where we are at the moment, so, to some extent, we’re stuck with it.

Firstly, chess is just too hard for children below the age of about 7. Children, unless they’ve been taught correctly, will spend time arguing over the rules and any legal moves they play will be pretty random. They will gain more benefit, and probably more enjoyment as well, by playing simpler games which are easier to understand and easier to play well. Fortunately, there are lots of simpler games you can play with just some of the chess pieces which will be at least as much fun for children as ‘big chess’ as well as giving them skills which they will be able to use when they are ready to play the full game. One of the problems we have with school chess clubs at the moment is that because children know, or think they know, all the moves, they’re reluctant to play games with just some of the pieces. What seems to happen in the Netherlands is that learning the moves is the responsibility of the chess club, not of the parents. Or, if you prefer, we can provide parents with instructions on how to teach their children and only let them into the club when they are good enough.

Children can also use such games as Noughts and Crosses as preparation for chess. The principle is the same: it’s a two-person zero-sum game which you win if your opponent overlooks your threat or if you make a move which creates two threats at once; which is essentially what chess is, at a very much higher level, as well. Indeed, you could (and I would) argue that there’s not much point in doing too much chess unless you can play Noughts and Crosses well.

The other point is that if you promote chess as a fun game for young children it will automatically make it less attractive for older children, who will see it as ‘uncool’ and demeaning to play a young children’s game.

As anyone who plays competitively knows, chess is, or can be, a very difficult and demanding game for intelligent people who like a mental challenge. The children who just play fun chess at a low level are the ones who, you can be absolutely sure, will quickly get bored and will not take a long-term interest in the game. If you are, or have been, a serious competitive chess player, you might well think, as I do, that it’s rather insulting to suggest that the game to which we devote so much time and which, at least in my case, we play rather badly, is so trivial as to be suitable for 7-year-olds, or even for 5-year-olds.

Proposition 6: Chess is a game at which some young children, in specific circumtances, can excel - but there are many fun games children can play with chess pieces.

7. The more children who learn chess the better

Why? If my first mantra is that every child should have the opportunity to learn chess my second is that every child who wants to learn chess should be taught in the best possible way.

When I asked Cor van Wijgerden, the co-author of the Dutch Steps Method, what he thought of the UK Chess Challenge he replied: “I don’t want to teach 70,000 children to learn to play chess, as Mike Basman apparently does (or I must have 7,000 trainers available) and lose almost all of them (although … the turnover of the first step will rise!) I want to teach 1,000 children and I would like that at least 100 will have a fantastic hobby for the rest of their life. I know that I must raise their playing strength to a certain level otherwise they will quit. So that start must be perfect. Skill developing from the beginning (playing games as in the first 6 lessons of Step 1). Not starting with whole games because chess is too difficult.”

Well, I guess it depends on what you want out of chess. If you just want as many children as possible to have fun playing chess and you’re prepared to sacrifice it as an adult activity then by all means go ahead and teach 70,000 children badly. But if you’re looking to increase the number of serious teenage and adult players, then you should, in the first instance, aim to teach fewer children well rather than more children badly.

What do we mean by teaching children well? According to international experts in early years chess it means starting from first principles, going very slowly, teaching in small groups (4-12 children), following a highly structured and methodical course. What it certainly doesn’t mean is Dad teaching little Johnny the moves in ten minutes so that he can join the school chess club next week and play in the UK Chess Challenge. The implication of Cor van Wijgerden’s answer is that schools and clubs should be teaching absolute beginners, rather than just assuming children can already play. It’s also interesting that, although the Steps method is used in both schools and clubs, he refers to clubs rather than schools.

We need to put across a clear message about what chess is, and, perhaps more importantly, what it isn’t, and, as I wrote earlier, to be proactive in identifying children who are mostly likely to benefit from chess. Once we have a system that works we can then go about training more teachers and teaching more children well.

Proposition 7: It’s better to teach a few children well than a lot of children badly.

[Please come back tomorrow (when Richard looks at chess teaching methods), and every day for the rest of this week, for more in the series.]

Richard James On Junior Chess: 2. This For Starters

On Friday last we trailed this series of guest posts by Richard James with his assessment of the state of junior chess in this country. The series continues today and will appear every day, i.e. Monday to Saturday inclusive, throughout this week, taking an in-depth look at junior chess, training at school level and beyond, and how to nurture chess talent.

Richard has organised his thoughts around a number of propositions, the first of which he discussed on Friday. As the series unfolds your comments would be welcome, especially if you have experience of junior chess.
Richard James on Junior Chess

2. All children should learn chess

Yes – in an ideal world every child ‘should’ learn chess. But every child ‘should’ also learn Bridge, Scrabble, Mancala, Go, Backgammon and many other board and card games. Every child ‘should’ also participate in a wide range of individual and team, outdoor and indoor sports. Every child ‘should’ also be able to learn at least two musical instruments from different families, and learn about a wide range of musical genres. Every child ‘should’ also sing in a choir. Every child ‘should’ also be able to experiment with a wide variety of arts and crafts using a wide range of media. Every child ‘should’ also learn to speak several foreign languages. Every child ‘should’ join a youth organisation such as, depending on parental taste, the Scouts or Guides, a Cadet Corps or the Woodcraft Folk. Every child ‘should’ learn how to cook. Every child ‘should’ take up gardening. Every child ‘should’ study philosophy. Every child ‘should’ take up meditation. Every child ‘should’ learn how to program a computer and design a website. Every child ‘should’ do a thousand and one other interesting, enjoyable and beneficial things. Each one of these activities has enthusiasts who are trying to persuade parents and schools that children ‘should’ share their particular interest. At the same time children – not ‘should’ but ‘must’ – have a basic education in terms of reading, writing, mathematics, sciences and humanities which will enable them to make sense of the world, continue to further, more specialised, education should they wish to do so, and find a job. At the same time many experts are increasingly concerned that children are doing too much too soon and don’t have enough time just to enjoy being themselves.

Wearing my ‘chess’ hat it’s very easy for me to visit schools and tell them all children should do chess. But wearing my ‘teacher’ hat, and as a teacher who believes in small-scale, child-centred education, I can see that, for many of the children at the school where I teach, chess may not be the best use of their time.

If we take the activities mentioned above and rank them in order of the number of children who would gain significant benefit from them, much as I love chess I wouldn’t put it at the top. (I wouldn’t put it at the bottom either, but that’s not my point.)

Here’s GM Jaan Ehlvest, writing in the introduction to his new chess course based on the step by step methods used in Russia for many years:

“This book is especially for those children who, for whatever reason, find chess more interesting than karate, music etc.”

As it’s a book for absolute beginners I suppose teachers or parents are expected to be proactive in deciding which children should try chess.

David Malam is a strong (200+) chess player and the head of Twickenham Preparatory School, one of the strongest chess schools in the country. He is very enthusiastic about using strategy games on the school curriculum but concedes that some children will gain more from simpler games such as Connect 4, or from team rather than individual games, than from chess.

So instead of saying that ‘all children should learn chess’, let’s say that ‘all children should have the opportunity to learn chess’. And let’s send out the message about the sort of children who are most likely to enjoy and benefit from chess (academically able, particularly at maths perhaps, competitive, often introverted, can focus intently one one thing, prefer individual to team activities, prefer quiet to loud activities) and encourage parents and schools to be proactive about which children should learn chess. One possible idea for primary schools is to use chess as a curriculum enhancement option for gifted and talented maths students, but many other approaches are also possible.

Proposition 2: All children should have the opportunity to learn chess.

3. All schools should do chess

Again, many of the same arguments apply. There’s a whole host of extra-curricular activities that schools could offer and usually they have to make a choice. We might want to give as many schools as possible the option of chess but we have to realise and accept that many schools are, not always for sensible reasons, opposed to chess. If a school such as Twickenham Prep has a senior member of staff who is keen on chess it might well want to encourage children to play on a daily basis, which is of course absolutely fine. But you can’t really force schools who are not interested to do chess.

For these reasons, any attempt to promote chess as a compulsory subject in schools in the UK is doomed to failure. There are better ways for us to promote junior chess than to waste our time on something that will never happen. In Armenia, yes, because it’s part of their national culture. But here it’s not, and almost certainly never will be.

Before we go any further we have to ask ourselves what exactly we mean by ‘do chess’ anyway. There are three products that schools can offer: teaching chess to beginners, providing opportunities for children who have learnt the moves to play casual games with their friends and providing tuition for children who are interested in trying out serious competitive chess. Just deciding you want to ‘do’ chess and starting a club will attract children with all three requirements and you’ll probably end up not doing any of them optimally. It would be entirely sensible and logical for a school to choose any combination of these three, or none. But if we’re going to go into schools we need to explain the possibilities to them, give them different options, and, for the first and third, offer them an outstanding product, as well as, where necessary, an outstanding teacher. While we have some outstanding teachers (and others who are not outstanding) we don’t have an outstanding product. In fact we don’t really have a product at all.

Compare chess with swimming. You might want to teach young children how to swim, to provide facilities for children to have fun splashing around in the shallow end, and provide coaching for competitive swimmers. But you’d need different people for each purpose: someone used to working with young children to teach the beginners, a life guard to supervise the children having fun in the shallow end and a proper swimming coach for the competitive swimmers. And you wouldn’t do them all at the same time because they’d just get in each other’s way.

My basic problem with teaching in primary school chess clubs comes down to this: most of the children in these clubs are only interested in playing casual games with their friends and have no interest in learning or improving their chess. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t do just as there’s no reason why they shouldn’t kick a ball around in the playground or splash around in the shallow end of the pool. We need to identify those who do want to take chess seriously, and whose parents are prepared to support this, and provide the tuition they need within a different environment.

Proposition 3: Schools should think very carefully about what they want out of chess.

4.We should be encouraging chess in schools

Right, so we’ve decided that we want to give every child the opportunity to learn chess. If we’re realistic we’re also aware that not every school will want to teach children chess, and that forcing schools to do this will not work. So what do we do?

Fortunately, there’s an answer which is, at least in principle, simple. We set up a network of Junior Chess Clubs, or Schools, or Academies, or Centres of Excellence or whatever you want to call them. These clubs (or whatever) would be professionally run and provide outreach to the local schools and community. The staff would include teachers who were not necessarily strong players but who were knowledgeable about how to teach chess to young children, as well as strong players for higher level coaching. 3Cs in Oldham run something very similar to this at the moment. Richmond used to, but, for various reasons, no longer does. We’re working on it, though.

So if a school in that area wanted to do chess the Club would be able to advise them on their options, provide or recommend appropriate coaching materials and lesson plans, and, if required, provide a chess teacher. They would also run beginners’ groups for children who were not able to learn at school as well as groups for more experienced players who wanted to learn how to play at a competitive level. Schools who just wanted to provide facilities for casual games wouldn’t need a professional coach, just an enthusiastic teacher or parent who knew the rules, and could feed through those children who wanted to take chess more seriously.

In other countries in Western Europe things are easier. A chess club will often be a large organisation meeting at weekends where chess is by no means the only activity. Such a club would often have an active junior section offering tuition at all levels in the same way that football, rugby and cricket clubs operate here. But our chess clubs tend to be small and insular, meeting in draughty church halls or dubious pubs, run by middle-aged men with little interest in the outside world. Until this situation changes, and I really don’t see it happening, we need to promote junior clubs instead (which could well be connected to the local adult club).

There are many reasons (and I write from experience) why junior chess clubs are much better than schools at producing children with a lifelong interest in chess. They also, at a lower level, can provide a means whereby every child has the opportunity to play chess.

I would propose that the main focus of junior chess development in this country should be through setting up a network of junior chess clubs, not directly through promoting chess in schools.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I have no problem with schools which are really committed to chess and where children get the chance to play on a regular basis, as long as there’s a junior club to attract their strongest players. About 20 years ago there were two primary schools in Richmond where the headteacher was very keen on chess and all children were taught to play. One of the schools produced a GM and the other produced two IMs. Children who just play chess once a week at school, though, will make little progress and soon lose interest.

Proposition 4: We should set up a network of junior chess clubs providing outreach to schools.

[Please come back tomorrow - and the rest of the week! - when Richard examines the frequently asserted, but seldom scrutinised, view that chess is good for kids.]

Cover version: Brand New

Brand New, Your Favorite Weapon (Triple Crown, 2001)

[Kings Of Convenience]
[Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza]

[Thanks to Phil]

Richard James On Junior Chess: 1. Where Are We Now?

The Streatham and Brixton Chess blog is delighted to host a series of guest posts by junior chess trainer Richard James. He is known to many as a foremost authority on the theory and practice of chess pedagogy for young people.

His views on the state of junior chess in this country, and how it should be taught and developed, are based on years of thought and experience. Accordingly they are forthright and trenchant. So, to give his arguments the space they deserve we have taken the unusual step of clearing next week's schedule and giving it over to Richard.

Today there is a taste of things to come, and he will continue to set out his stall on Monday through to Saturday next week - and that's every day, Tuesday and Thursday included. Your comments throughout the series will be welcome.

Now, over to Richard, where he develops a number of propositions to contest claims which we will all recognise, but that, he argues, don't stand up to close examination.

Richard James On Junior Chess

1. England leads the world in junior chess

A generation ago, England really did come pretty close to leading the world in junior chess, but now things are very different. In the past we would have had potential medallists in many age groups in the World and European Youth Championships while today we get excited if someone scores 50%. Of course we still have a few outstanding young players, and it’s good that there is talk of providing better facilities for them, but it’s more in terms of strength in depth that we are lagging further and further behind other Western European countries, not to mention Eastern Europe and Asia. The current FIDE list has 19 active English players born in 1995 (two of whom are based in France) and 258 active Spanish players of the same age. The 2012 French Junior Championships have 593 boys and 426 girls playing in 7 age groups (roughly U21 down to U8, to link up with the FIDE youth/junior events), all of whom have qualified through a network of regional leagues and chess clubs within leagues, along with another 211 players in two open sections.

I believe, from nearly 40 years’ experience teaching chess that one of the problems starts right at the beginning: that the experience young children get in primary school chess clubs, or, in many cases, the way they’ve been taught the moves at home before joining their primary school chess club, leads to low standards of play and only gives them a short-term interest in chess. It became clear to me 15 years or so ago that the way we were teaching, organising and promoting chess for young children was misguided, and, for this reason, I eventually felt obliged to give up most of my junior chess commitments and start searching for an answer. At first I thought that we were simply starting children too young but looking at the way chess was taught in other countries and an e-mail conversation three years ago with Cor van Wijgerden, the co-author of the Dutch Steps Method convinced me that it wasn’t quite as simple as that: if you start children young you need to go about teaching them in a different way. But before we can make any real process we have to acknowledge that there’s a problem.

I would put it to you that one of the major reasons for our decline is that some other countries are using structured teaching methods for young beginners rather than the ad hoc methods, if you can call them that, that we seem to encourage here. I don’t have much knowledge of the methods used in France and Spain, and would be very interested to hear from anyone with experience of junior chess in these countries.

Proposition 1: England is way behind much of the world in junior chess, specifically in terms of strength in depth. We need to look at what’s happening in other, culturally similar, countries in Western Europe, and see how we can learn from them.

[Please come back on Monday, and the rest of next week, for more Richard James On Junior Chess.]

Nothing will come of nothing

These are the things that people do not know.
They do not know because they are not told.

- Hilaire Belloc

Here's a little clipping. It's from the Report of the Chairman of the [ECF] Finance Committee, a document published some time ago but submitted to the meeting of the ECF Finance Council on 14 April 2012. Last Saturday.

So how, you may be wondering, is it going, the attempt to "provide an adequate audit trail"? How much of this controversial £12,600 has been accounted for? For how much of it have CJ de Mooi and the ECF been able to provide receipts and invoices?

Ten thousand pounds? Five thousand? Fifty quid?

The answer is - we do not know. We do not know because we are not told.

If you have the patience, which I do not necessarily recommend, you can hunt around on this thread where you will find (last Sunday morning, if you must) the present author putting, more than once, the question, to ECF Chief Executive Andrew Farthing. However, Mr Farthing - or, as I prefer to think of him, the ECF's Mr Transparency - will not answer.

We do not know. We do not know, because we are not told.

Nothing to see here

Why not, I wonder? I can think of at least three reasons why ECF officials might not want to say how much of the money claimed by CJ cannot be accounted for.

• They may be embarrassed by the size of the sum which cannot be accounted for, and do not wish to make it public.
• They may be embarrassed by their own role in the financial incompetence which allowed this situation to happen, and do not wish it to be further discussed.
• They may actually not know what conditions players were receiving at their own tournament, due to having handed over everything to CJ de Mooi, and hence cannot make the sums add up.

These are not, of course, mutually exclusive possibilities. Are any of them true? We do not know. We do not know, because we are not told.

I can think of at least three reasons why ECF officials might not want to say how much cannot be accounted for. I can also say how many good reasons I can think of.

That number is nil.

I mean Mr Transparency could say something like "well, there's £6,789 we can't trace, but we don't think there's any likelihood of getting much more information and we're nevertheless confident that the money went where it was intended". This was be understandable, if less than brilliant. But he could say that. However, he does not.

Mr Transparency prefers to say nothing, and refer us to the great integrity of the individuals who have approved the accounts. Which is fatuous. It is nothing to do with anybody's integrity. It is to do with money unaccounted for.

Integrity? You can talk about integrity all you like, until something disastrous happens. After that, what you need is documentation and paperwork. Which we do not appear to have. And if you do not have it, don't be telling me about people's integrity. Because that's not the question I was asking.

Not so much lost as never found

So, how much is unaccounted for? We understand that some hotel bills have been presented, but how much is still left over? You can be sure that the answer isn't "nil", or anything close to it, because I fancy Mr Transparency wouldn't be quite so reticent if that were the case. It's a safe assumption (and if it is not, I'd be glad to be told so) that a substantial proportion of the money paid over to Mr de Mooi presently remains beyond any "adequate audit trail". If this is so then another way to put this is that thousands of pounds are not properly accounted for. Which is the kind of situation for which the term "legitimate public concern" exists. Or to put it another way, it constitutes a scandal.

Now I know, from long experience (not least, having spent a certain part of my life writing about football clubs and their owners) that a lot of people simply don't get questions of financial organisation and propriety. "Well, where do you think the money's gone?", they will ask. But of course that's not really the problem. The problem is not that we know where the money went, it's that we don't know where the money went. The question therefore is not just "where has it gone?" - it's "why don't we know where it went?".

In my view, as it stands, what we have might be the single most shocking manifestation of financial negligence in the organisation's history. In a way, worse than Tunis, as more money is involved.

Blind, mad, or led by a Fool?

You simply cannot hand over thousands of pounds to people without proper documentation. If, by some disastrous chance, you do, and you are serious about trying to retrieve your mistake, you absolutely have to do so thoroughly - and to report the results of your investigations openly.

That's basic. And the corollary applies: if you're neither thorough nor open, then you are not serious.

But the ECF don't seem to do thorough. Nor does Mr Transparency do open.

To sum up:

1. If you do not deal properly with serious problems when they occur, you ensure that serious problems will recur. Perhaps not the same ones, precisely, but other ones quite like them.
2. If you cover up a scandal, you do not erase the scandal. You merely multiply it.

What has happened here is a scandal and a cover-up. I am sorry to use those terms. But as it stands, that is what it is.

Mr Transparency has told us nothing. And nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.


[Andrew Farthing image: Worcester City Chess Club]
[Lear image: playbill.com]
[CJ de Mooi index]

Seeing Red

In a world of black and white, why am I seeing red?

Leathermouth

There is no blue pill

Tilt is a poker phenomenon that gets a lot of coverage. So what about its chess equivalent, if it exists? Of course, ridiculously aggressive moves in poker can still yield a positive result, which is why I'm going to be tentative. 

The recent Chucky blow-up was spectacular, but that's not really what I'm talking about. I suppose the discussion from a fortnight ago is more relevant as my initial lashing out was tempered with some good play and brought success. 

I'm going to suggest that tilt in chess is the process by which a player refuses to accept that a draw is the best that they can realistically hope for. Let's call it overextension. Its chess incarnation is covered more than adequately in the Ego chapter of Rowson's 7DCS, but I'm more interested in its cross-cultural basis. 

Cricketers, footballers, pokerers - just how easy is it to adjust from attack to defence compared to chess?

The Mill On The Floss

He thought he saw before him now a possibility of altering his position with respect to Maggie, and removing at least one obstacle between them. He laid his plan and calculated all his moves with the fervid deliberation of a chess-player in the days of his first ardour, and was amazed himself at his sudden genius as a tactician. His plan was as bold as it was thoroughly calculated.

George Eliot, The Mill on The Floss, Penguin Popular Classics, 1994, p. 433. (Original date of publication 1860.)

Having been on an extended break from chess, I've had more time for reading, which is how I came to discover this passage in George Eliot's famous novel a few weeks ago. Generally I'd be inclined to put such a passage directly into the series A Literary Reference, without further comment. In this instance, though, the passage begs a question which I can't help but ask: what is Eliot on about?

Do what, Marian?

When she writes, of the lovestruck Philip Wakem:

[He] calculated all his moves with the fervid deliberation of a chess-player in the days of his first ardour

what is she actually trying to say? The "first ardour" is not, as far as I can see, Philip's ardour for Maggie, since he has been in love with her for a long time. The sense of the passage is surely that the ardour is that of the metaphorical chessplayer, and that such an individual's "fervid deliberation" would be particularly so "in the days of their first ardour". But it wouldn't, would it?

So am I misreading Eliot, or being unfair to her - or did she just not know what she was on about? And do any readers know of any critical commentary on the passage?

Found Art

Friday. Some flotsam and jetsam from the internet to see us through to the weekend is the order of the day, methinks.

First, a twitter gem:-

Cricket is like chess - eleven men against eleven

which originates from Geoff Boycott on Test Match Special apparently. He might need a brush up on the basics, but I can't help but feel that Boycs would make a fine commentator at chess events. Wouldn't the London Chess Classic be even more fun if we had him wandering around the hall explaining to all and sundry that his grannie could have mated Carlsen 'with a stick of rhubarb'?

It's a game of chess out there

Second, we move on to something rather less savoury that I stumbled across on Facebook.  To wit,

My mum once walked into a hall full of chess dravers and opined that Cherniaev must be the only one in there who's ever had a good shag.

What exactly can our anonymous correspondent's mother see in everybody's favourite Curmudgeonly GM that can't be found in the average 'chess draver'?  What on earth is a 'draver'?  These are questions that must be left unanswered.

Do you have any chess at all?

This is a photograph, albeit not a very good one, that I took of a bookshop in Pamplona. The shop, as you can see, is called Alekhine. It's in the north of the city, at Avenida Marcelo Celayeta, 126.

I was expecting it to be a chess shop the moment I saw the name. More so when I saw the rook on the wall outside. Then there's the design of its website. With chess pieces all over it.

But it's not a chess shop: it doesn't have any chess books in it. Its webpage advertising magazines and newspapers makes no mention of any chess periodicals. In fact there doesn't seem to be a trace of chess about the place. You can even buy bread. You can buy cakes and rolls and all sots of nice things. But you can't buy any chess things.

Odd. What's the point? Why put the rook on the wall? Why put the chess pieces on the website? Why call it Alekhine? Not exactly a typical name in Pamplona, and besides, a name only immediately recognisable to somebody interested in chess.

Though as far as I'm aware he never played in Pamplona

Maybe it used to be a chess shop? Maybe it was set up by somebody who play chess? Who knows? I should really have asked in the shop what it was all about. But I was worried it might turn out like this...

[Thanks to Angus]

Tales from the Breakfast Club II

Ian Hislop would be proud. I really hope that Ray was showing a sense of humour there...

In other news, this week Ray has mostly been retweeting someone whose feed is entirely other people's thoughts. Hmm. Oh, and someone a little closer to home...

Ray Keene Index

Just Barely Got Something to do with chess

INT: CONVENIENCE STORE. DAY

RANDAL

How long did you date Caitlin?

DANTE

Five years

RANDAL

Chick only made you nuts. She cheated on you how many times?

DANTE

Eight and a half.

RANDAL

(looks up from paper)

Eight and a half?

DANTE

Party at John K's - senior year. I get blitzed and pass out in the bedroom. Caitlin comes in and jumps all over me.

RANDAL

That's cheating?

DANTE

In the middle of it, she calls me Brad.

RANDAL

She called you Brad?

DANTE

She called me Brad

RANDAL

That's not cheating. People say crazy shit during sex. One time, I called this girl "Mom."

DANTE

I hit the lights and she freaks. Turns out she thought I was Brad Michaelson.

RANDAL

What do you mean?

DANTE

She was supposed to meet Brad Michaelson in a bedroom. She picked the wrong one. She had no idea I was even at the party.

RANDAL

Oh, my God.

DANTE

Great story isn't it?

RANDAL

That girl was vile to you.

DANTE

Interesting postscript to that story: Do you know who wound up going with Brad Michaelson in the other dark bedroom?

RANDAL

Your mother.

DANTE

Allan Harris.

RANDAL

Chess team Allan Harris?!

DANTE

The two moved to Idaho together after graduation. They raise sheep.

RANDAL

That's frightening.

DANTE

It takes different strokes to move the world.

... to do with chess Index

Don't hold your breath

Ever heard of "diving chess"? Course you haven't. Nor had I, until I read Chess Life online for February 2012, specifically a piece in which the editor, Jennifer Shahade, goes to London and interviews various chess-related individuals. Some of them, perhaps, more closely related to the game than others. Some of them, perhaps, more closely related to reality than others.

Perhaps furthest from reality, although the major subject of the piece, is Etan Itfeld, who (it says here) "debuted" this "new form" in the course of "the Mind Sport Games in London in August". Damn, I missed it. But never mind, for Mr Itfeld and Ms Shahade take tea in the course of her first paragraph and he sets out "the rules and inspirations behind Diving Chess".

Players compete using a floating chessboard and waterproof set - you can only think about your moves underwater. Once a player emerges from the water, he must move within five seconds. If he fails to, he receives a penalty. Three penalties equals a time forfeit. "If someone surprises you with a tactical trap, it's hard to hold your breath for over a minute."

It's also hard to hold your breath while laughing, but do go on. Itfeld, who "previously lived in California" - you surprise me - explains his concept further:

it's a way to bring the physical into chess.

One could of course achieve the same thing by throwing Mr Itfeld, with his waterproof sets and floating chessboard, into the pool, for which one would not expect to receive a penalty.

But really. If you were any normal person, you would probably think, "I have never heard anything quite so stupid in my entire life." Or, if you were a chessplayer, you would probably think, "I have never heard anything quite so stupid in my entire life. Not even chessboxing."

Ms Shahade, being a chessplayer, is also put in mind of chessboxing, although for some reason she believes it has "exploded into a phenomenon". Perhaps it has (if you can explode "into" anything). In the same sort of sense that UFOs are a phenomenon.

Jennifer's hat explodes into a phenomenon

By this point it was my brain rather than the phenomenon which exploded and I only caught up with the more sensible stuff (i.e. Malcolm, mostly, at least when he's doing his shop rather than the chessboxing) later on. But what's good in the first part of the piece could be recited within five seconds immediately after spending a period of time underwater.

But why? Why is so much chess writing so unchallenging, even when it comes to the most absurd or dubious subjects? Perhaps because a lot of it appears to operate on the principle that we need to 'promote chess' and that the way to do this is to give favourable mention to any old nonsense you happen to come across, provided that it has a chess connection.

I don't think that this is true. And I hope, one day, that will change. But don't hold your breath.

[Image: PokerStarsBlog]
[Chessboxing index]

Any excuse...

There are bits of my non-chess life that I'll find any excuse to mention on the blog. Like...

PDA

I'm not really into PDA. Or PDAs for that matter. I prefer a phone.

 No thanks.

I'm happy to make an exception though. Especially when I'm publicly displaying affection for something that's been metaphorically laying down my quivering body by the fire for over half my life. And will continue to do so until a bloke dressed in black is laying down my motionless body into a box.

Writing for a chess blog or three over the last couple of years has crystalised my feelings about the game. It's my form of cognitive psychology, except with less pot-pourri and fewer tissues. This post is very self-indulgent, but I reckon the experience I'm about to describe is one that will resonate with many people; it can be generalised to most facets of life. And the tagline is thus:

That when you're wading through a constant stream of crap, you love something enough to not let it take you down. 

Dublin, August 2011.

Before Round 1, in happier times

A couple of weeks before the Dublin IM Norm tournament was due to begin, Sean Hewitt advertised on the English Chess Forum that they still had a space for a foreign 2100+ player. I was lucky enough to be having a lazy day at work and I saw the post almost immediately after it was published. So, of course, I snapped up the offer. 

Now, this wasn't quite fresh territory for me. I'd done reasonably well in the Big Slick IM Norm event in June and, with a live rating of 2110, was looking to make the push towards 2200. I went knowing that my expected score was just over 2/9; I'd set myself a realistic target of 3. This was despite the Dublin field being far less forgiving than the Big Slick field. At the latter, I'd had four sub-2200 players to stick my teeth into.

And it was perhaps of no surprise that, in Dublin, I lost my first 5 games.  


So what does one do at this point? I hadn't been playing particularly badly, just a little limply. However, you can't do that when you're outrated by 250 points every game. In Round 6 I was paired against Stephen Brady, who was still very much on for an IM norm. I was fed up. I was done with playing tightly and defending a small minus for 4 hours.


I decided to get mad. I played the Haldane Hack.

Now, this wasn't part of Stephen's plan. Here he was, needing to brush aside the young demoralised backmarker, and coming up against what can only be described as fruit. And, you know what, the young backmarker started to enjoy himself again. The young backmarker played freely and confidently and with an element of what Rowson terms in Chess For Zebras as flow. And the young backmarker drew with some ease.

I'm a human being, goddammit! 5. Qh5!? has value!

I'd come through the worst and I knew that, even if I lost the rest and went on to finish with ½/9, it wouldn't make a lasting impression. As even the water I was drinking during the games started to taste better, I was reminded of this passage from Fight Club:

"Raymond K. K. Hessel, your dinner is going to taste better than any meal you've ever eaten, and tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of your entire life."

You know, and various bits about only being able to make progress once you've hit bottom. You've seen the film. You know what I'm talking about.

Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Makepeace?

That game against Stephen Brady was possibly the most important game I've ever played as I proved many things to myself. Getting 0/9 wouldn't have broken me for the public humiliation; I couldn't give a toss what the public thinks. Personal humiliation is always far worse.

Scoring ½/9 was of course still a very bad result. The 24 rating points were, however, a small price to pay for what I learnt out there. For what I learnt about myself and how important the game is to me.

Script Frenzy

Where all the chess films? Sure, there are plenty with chess in them - we had Sherlock Holmes II a little while ago and Harry Brown not long before that - but movies where our favourite game is the central theme? Off the top of my head I can think of Luhzin Defence and Knight Moves and that's about it in recent times.

No, chessers don't do very well on the big screen. Sometimes even the briefest of allusions to the 64 squares will find itself cut from the final edit. So, if nobody else is going to do it, perhaps it's time we got proactive and wrote something ourselves.

For those that know about it, Script Frenzy has become an annual institution. Every April thousands of people around the world sit down with one and the same goal: write a full-length 100-page film script before the month is out.

I know what you're thinking. Writing a film from scratch in thirty days? It's a big ask. Impossible in fact. The only conceivable result from writing in such a rush is a big steaming pile of poo, isn't it?

You know what? You're right. Sort of.

The idea is to end up with a first draft. Something you can revise. You - or we, since I will be doing it too - will be working on the principle that the art of writing is rewriting and if nothing else you/we will at least have made a start. That's further than most people with an idea ever get, immobilised as they are by the feeling that they have to get everything perfect right from the off.

Don't worry if you've never written a film script, or anything at all, before. There's a shedful of resources available to download on the website. If you give it a go I'm sure you'll find it a lot of fun. I know that from taking part in Frenzy's sister activity, NaNoWriMo, where you Write a Novel in a Month (Beograd Endgame: 50,339 words in 28 days, thanks for asking).

Writing starts at one second past midnight on Saturday night/Sunday morning, but if you're reading this on Saturday you can always do a bit of pre-planning to help yourself get started. If you've got an idea, perhaps just a vague one, you might want to spend some of today creating a 'logline', what Script Frenzy describe as "a one sentence, '25 words or less' description of a screenplay".

As it happens they have some advice on loglines:-

It should have a clear beginning, middle and end, and will usually start by introducing the main character like so:

The President of the chess club ...

Then describing the character's journey:

joins the football team hoping to impress a girl ...

And finishing by summarizing the story's outcome without giving away the ending.

... only to find that what works on the chessboard doesn't necessarily work on the football field ... or in the game of love.

A lame joke, of course, but there's the guts of something in there. A chess boxing club rather than a football team is much more the ticket. Make that change and work in a FIDE female dress-code subplot and we've got ourselves a chess film.

Time to get writing ... and feel free to starting making room on your mantelpiece for an Oscar if you wish.

Really

Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam, New In Chess 2012/2, page 16:

In the second weekend Wijk Aan Zee was literally flooded by press representatives and hordes of curious men, women and children.

Poster available from Oatmeal

[Previously]

Short Stories

The conspicuous absence of the Pakistan Chess Federation throughout my visit in itself tells a story. They were invited, but chose not to attend. This hopelessly dysfunctional body is by far the biggest impediment to the development of the game in the country. It doesn’t answer emails and attempts to thwart any initiative it does not control. Its President, Altaf Chaudhry, was thrown into prison in 2010 … Long suffering chess lovers have finally had enough.

Nigel Short, New in Chess 2012#2

The latest copy of New in Chess arrived the other day. Always a happy event, this edition includes an excellent piece by Nigel Short on chess in Pakistan. Previously I hadn’t given any thought whatsoever to how our favourite game might be getting on in that particular country, but that’s good writers for you. They take you places that you never realised you wanted to go.

Nige takes a dim view of the prospects for chess in those parts of the sub-continent that aren’t India.  That, as it happens, is in marked contrast to his opinion on the future for the game back in Blightly. Indeed, just a few months ago he used his column to explain that the current President of the ECF has “energised” his federation. Do you know, I’m not entirely sure that I agree – although that de Mooi has energised the flow of fivers into the pocket of one Nigel David Short is certainly beyond dispute – but it was another very good article nonetheless.

Unfortunately, Short’s performance in his role at the English Chess Federation has not always reached the standards of his work at the keyboard. The behaviour of our President has raised many eyebrows and not just our own. Considerably less remarked upon, however, is the off-the-board stinker that our long-time number one chesser has been playing in recent times.

Last October’s AGM in particular was far from his finest hour and, as we shall see, if anything his comments there (or lack thereof) regarding the FIDE lawsuit and financial matters relating to the British Championship look even worse now than they did six months ago. So bad, in fact, that I feel it's time that we joined the chess lovers of Pakistan and said that enough is enough.

There are quite a few things that we know now that we weren’t aware of at the time of the AGM. One of them is the little matter of the ECF getting itself involved in suing FIDE.

I’m indebted to Roger de Coverly for bringing the matter to my attention, as indeed I am with regard to the recent report of the Finance Committee which we’ll come on to later. It seems that Short has since written of the ECF's involvement with the legals, but even though it had all kicked-off months before the AGM, and even though at the meeting he was,

… quizzed about the ECF’s working relationship with FIDE … a discussion which lasted, if I recall, quite a few minutes ….*

see here

the AGM heard no mention of the lawsuit whatsoever.

After the legal case had become public knowledge Andrew Farthing apologised for the board’s failure to publicise it - “no intention to hide this matter from Council – it was genuinely overlooked” – but what of Nige? He wasn’t the only one to let himself – and us – down in this regard, but since he was acting as both FIDE Delegate and Alternate to the President it’s hard to see things any other way than the responsibility to inform the meeting was primarily his. Is it too much to ask that he acknowledge this? Apparently it is.

How big a mess is it?
photo from Chess Vibes

Short’s role in the non-announcement of the lawsuit is worth pursuing in itself, but it’s not the end the story. There’s also the shambles – my favourite word and all too applicable at the moment – that was (and still is) the finances for Sheffield 2011.

As we have seen, it was Nigel Short himself who gave the AGM the advice about gift horses. That’s rarely a sensible line to take, not even - as David Cameron will tell you - when it’s you that will get to do most of the riding, and you’d have thought that as a big cricket fan he would have had the ECB/Stanford fiasco fresh in his mind.  That didn't stop Nigel, though.

I find the attitude completely bizarre, but matters of an equine nature are not my primary concern just now. For today, I’m more interested in our man’s response when concerns were raised about the ECF President’s failure to fulfil the many promises he made to provide full accounts for the simul tour that Short had undertaken earlier in the year.

Regular readers may recall that in the comments box to my post of "Some questions for the ECF AGM", Mike Gunn** wrote,

In the discussion which took place several people (including Nigel Short) made the point that in practice you couldn't forecast the financial outcome of events like simul displays in advance.

(my emphasis)

In that article on Pakistani chess, Short wrote about it being “intellectually dishonest” not to question an “obvious doubt” concerning the long-standing claim that chess originated in what is now Pakistan. Well, dear reader, what of the ‘obvious doubt’ concerning the point of view that Mike reports above, i.e. the fact that even a cursory glance at de Mooi’s posts on the EC Forum reveals that he was not reporting ‘estimates’ but stating as a fact that certain sums had been raised.

What are we talking about here? A deliberate attempt to mislead the AGM or the rank incompetence of people spouting off about something that they had not actually seen? It simply isn't credible that anybody could have read de Mooi's posts and genuinely believed that he was reporting "estimates", so I can't see any other alternatives. It's one of those two.

Actually, it makes little difference either way. It doesn’t even really matter if Short was one of those who articulated this view at the AGM or not. It was his simul tour and he was paid good money to undertake it***. He was also taking part in an activity which was being advertised as a fundraiser for Sheffield. If the tour did in fact make some money for the 2011 British Championships – as we know, de Mooi’s reports differ – Short would have benefited from that too****.

The fact is, since Short was intimately acquainted with the mess that was the accounting for the his simul tour it is reasonable to expect that at some stage he would at been proactive and said something like, "You know, this guy doesn't really fancy numbers all that much. I’m not sure that leaving him in sole charge of the money for Sheffield is an incredibly good idea". He didn’t say any such thing, though, and in due course we ended up with the accounting for the 2011 British Championships.

When it comes down to it, it was Nigel Short who failed to warn the ECF board of the chaos that the President was about to bring to the Championship and then, it seems, Nigel Short was one of those who responded in particularly obtuse fashion when asked about what had gone on with his own tour. Well, as he himself wrote immediately after praising de Mooi in that New in Chess article,

An awful lot remains to be done – particularly on putting the federation on a sounder financial footing ….

And with that, dear reader, we finally find something upon which he and I can agree.

Photo from TelegraphIndia.com

So there you have it. A lawsuit and a financial mess. Both are ECF failures, both were raised as matters of concern in the Report of the Chairman of the Finance Committee published a week or so ago and both have Nigel Short smack bang in the middle of them.

Am I being too harsh? I think not. Short failed to inform English chessers about the lawsuit, failed to warn the ECF about the horlicks that was about to descend on their championship and failed to respond with any interest when reasonable concerns were raised about what had happened .

No, it's not all Nigel's fault. The sorry situation in which English chess finds itself is not down to one man. Not even two. He played his part, though. A very significant part even.

It’s a real shame. If his performance in his role at the ECF did match his abilities as a writer and a chesser we’d be fine, but it doesn’t and we aren’t. Let's hope that in the coming weeks and months Nigel Short manages to raise his ECF game.








* This account comes from Angus French who was present at the meeting. Angus is a clubmate and friend of mine, as it happens, but he has nothing to do with the present post. The opinions contained herein are mine and not his.


** Once again, I should emphasise that the opinions/interpretations expressed here are mine alone. Mike (a) agreed to raise my concerns at the AGM and (b) took the time to report back afterwards. I’m grateful that he took the trouble when I had no right to expect him to do either of those things.


*** A fact which bothers me not in the slightest.  I do not begrudge anybody earning a living.  It's how they go about it that's the issue.


**** See ***

Palpitations

It's been a tough week. Last Saturday I found myself watching the horrible events unfold at White Hart Lane, pretty much in tears. While what was going on was obviously awful enough in of itself, it was a painful reminder of when my friend Tom died in 2009.

Coincidentally, there was a CRY event in Tom's memory at UCL on Tuesday as part of a nationwide screening drive. I, of course, attended. 

One of the medical forms asked whether I ever got heart palpitations. All I could think of was time scrambles during evening league chess matches; anyone who's ever seen me in the middle of one will agree that I tend to be an unholy mess. It felt like a silly thing to mention, but it made me think about just how involved I get in such a situation. Perhaps it's simply the crescendo effect of a frantic finish to an otherwise sedate contest, sort of like cycling sprints. It's something that just doesn't happen in squash or cricket, my two other weapons of choice.

Thanks to CRY, I now know I'm healthy. If you're 14-35, and in the smallest way active, I implore you to get checked out. Screenings are non-invasive and take no time at all. There are still spaces at events in Liverpool, London and Belfast over the coming months. And you can donate to CRY here.

Thank you.