State of chess

I WAS doing some reflection this Chinese New Year: making a personal reflection and also reflecting on the world at large in general. Not least, I was also reflecting on the state of chess and the direction it is likely to take.

In this country, I see chess continuing to attract its fair share of adherents to the game. Every year for the past three or four decades, I’ve been seeing many new tournaments run in various parts of the country.

I’ve also been seeing many new people drawn into the game. At every chess tournament, there are new faces and they are getting younger and younger. Sometimes, I recognise old faces: people who had not played chess for a while but are still drawn back into the game.

Of course, there were also the dropouts. Some lost interest completely while others scaled back their playing activities due to other pressing commitments. But by and large, new faces outgrew the dropouts and the local chess community continued to grow.

One of the reasons why I find the chess community growing is because chess is a relatively cheap game. All you need is a chess set. At worst, the most expensive investment is a chess clock.

Of course you will need some rudiments of chess theory but this can be picked up by reading instructional books on chess that you can pick up from the library or your local book store. You’ll need to have your wits around you and a sense of danger.

Finally, you’ll need an opponent sitting opposite you. Well, it may not be too easy to find a real, live sparring partner at the right place and time but hey, there are the chess-playing programs and there’s the Internet now.

These days, you don’t even need a chess set to play the game. There are so many sites that allow people from across the world to play chess with one another.

Some of these sites are subscription-based but many are free. You don’t even need to register if you don’t want to, because they’ll allow you to play on a guest account.

The explosive growth in chess sites and chess blogs over the past few years has also been contributing to the growth of the chess community. It’s good for chess because now, chess players find that they are able to express themselves outside of the 64 squares.

Chess sponsorship has also been encouraging at the local level. I’ve known of some organisations that have lent their names to chess events locally for decades.

How much of this sponsorship can be carried over into this year, however, remains to be seen. The way I look at it, it’s going to be a tough year to squeeze money for chess. It’s no thanks to the global financial mess that’s affecting all countries.

You may brand me an alarmist but I don’t subscribe to any suggestion that the impact of the global recession on Malaysia will be minimal. If we choose to ignore its impact on the country, we are only fooling ourselves.

Daily, we read of companies that have suffered losses, unable to fill their order books, imposing forced leave on their employees, closing their plants or letting go of their staff.

All these developments are disturbing and happening around us – to the people I know and the people you know – and we cannot assume that they are far removed from chess or any other sport or game for that matter.

Surely, one day, we’ll find that sponsorship money for local chess activities will also be affected. I can only hope that it will not happen any time soon but you can bet your last sen that raising funds for chess will become more difficult. Our sponsorship deals can only be as good as the health of the sponsoring company.

So, it is a sobering thought indeed. How the Malaysian Chess Federation and the state chess associations will react in the next one to two years will depend greatly on the goodwill of the companies that support their activities. All I can say is that it’s not going to be easy. Be prepared for cutbacks.

We’ve also to recognise that the economic downturn will hit the big-time, high-profile chess sponsorship too. Last week, I wrote that the Wijk aan Zee chess tournament is taking place in Holland. As the tournament winds down (it’s ending on Sunday), we are reminded that it is troubled times.

Last week, steelmaker Corus announced that it was shedding 3,500 jobs worldwide. Now, Dutch-based Corus is not only Europe’s second-biggest steel maker but they are also sponsor of the Wijk aan Zee tournament.

It’s anybody’s guess what went on in the minds of the players when the lay-off announcement was made (most probably nothing because most top chess players have a habit of enclosing themselves in their own world, far detached from reality) but it couldn’t have come at a worse time for the organisers.

It would be almost impossible to think that chess will not be affected. It would send the wrong signal if Corus continue to spend on chess sponsorship while thousands of their staff become jobless.

It’s not only the Wijk aan Zee tournament that may be affected. For sure, the World Chess Federation (Fide) itself is already feeling the fall-out. Last year, I had written several times about the Fide grand prix, a series of six tournaments meant to qualify players to the Fide candidates tournament.

Two legs of the grand prix circuit had already been held in Baku (Azerbaijan) and Sochi (Russia) last year but the third leg in Doha (Qatar) was almost cancelled because the city pulled out from organising it. Eventually, the third leg was rescheduled to Elista (Russia) where it was held last December.

But the latest development is that even the fourth leg in Montreux (Switzerland) and the sixth leg in Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic) – both meant for 2009 – have been cancelled because the organisers could not provide Fide with the guarantee for the prize fund.

One of the reasons cited for Karlovy Vary pulling out was the financial crisis as the event’s sponsor, NWR Coal Corporation, reportedly had 80% of its market value wiped out recently. So only the fifth leg, which will be in Elista again, is confirmed at this time.

As the global recession cuts deep, the question for professional chess is, what now?

So far, the consequences are most visibly seen in the upheavals to the Fide grand prix tournaments but that’s not going to be the end of the story. The coming months are going to be rocky times for world chess as organisers and the professional chess players grapple with the fast diminishing sponsorship and prize moneys.

Meanwhile, here’s a game from the second round of the Wijk aan Zee tournament.

White: Wang Yue (China)

Black: Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukraine)

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.Bg5 dxc4 5.Qa4+ Nbd7 6.Nc3 a6 7.g3 (Not sure whether White was planning 8.Bg2 next in order to contain Black’s queenside expansion. If that was the case, then this idea was faulty.) 7….b5 8.Nxb5 Rb8 9.Na7? (Continuing with his faulty idea. Surely, White should have seen that the knight would be lost?) 9….Rb4 (This move demonstrated the hole in White’s plans.) 10.Bxf6 gxf6 11.Qa5 Bb7 12.Bh3 Qb8 13.Qh5 Ke7 14.d5 Qxa7 15.dxe6 fxe6 16.Bxe6 (An inspirational resource.) 16….Kxe6 17.Qe8+ (See diagram)

17….Be7 18.Qxh8 Nf8 19.Qg8+ Kd7 20.0-0-0+ (Castling right into the storm. White’s king isn’t safe on the queen’s wing. Better alternatives included 20.Qf7 and 20.Qg4+) 20….Ke8 21.Qg4 Qc5 22.a3 Rxb2! 23.Kxb2 Qxa3+ 24.Kb1 Qb3+ 25.Ka1 c3 0-1 (Checkmate is unavoidable, e.g. 26.Kb1 Qa3 mate)