Chess makes a comeback… and even Usain Bolt is a fan

1/2

20 September 2012

A drive to restore chess to its former popularity has begun as a major championship will be launched in London tomorrow.

Britain’s most successful chess player, Nigel Short, who challenged Garry Kasparov for the world title in London in 1993, said today the game was poised to see the return of “the drama of the titanic struggles of the Seventies”.

Its popularity has been on the rise with a recent YouGov poll showing 600 million adult players worldwide, among them Justin Bieber, Usain Bolt and Bill Gates.

Online games have also helped bring it to the fore.

Today Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, which opened in 1828 as a chess club and coffee house and became known as the “home of chess”, is the venue for the September Grand Prix World Chess Championship.

This will kick-start the 2012/13 championship cycle, which then returns to London next March.

Grandmaster Mr Short said: “The thing that kicked me off was the match between Bobby Fischer from the US and Boris Spassky from the Soviet Union in 1972, when I was seven.

“It was dubbed the chess match of the century but was really the match of all time. There was so much excitement generated by it and it got me saying ‘I want to become a chess professional’.

“A lot of matches from the Seventies onwards had huge publicity and attracted a worldwide audience. There was a great deal of drama in those titanic struggles, and it is still there.”

More than a dozen of the world’s top players are due to be in Simpson’s, including China’s best, 23-year-old Wang Hao.

Chess columnist Raymond Keene said: “The return of the world championships to Simpson’s represents the start of a long journey to restore chess to its rightful place in the public imagination.”

One survey showed that more than 12 per cent of adults in Britain played chess frequently last year.

Short and sweet

Emer Martin

I was a little nervous as I pulled my chair up to the chessboard at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand to face a man who is arguably the strongest British chess player of the 20th century.

The last time I played was on a magnetic board on a ferry to Ireland in 1998, so I feared I might be a little rusty.

The game was over in 12 moves. In a grand total of three minutes and in full view of half a dozen people, I suffered total annihilation.

It was so swift and elegant I didn’t even notice it was happening.

So Short offered me three things which would improve my game by at least 100 points:

1) Your pieces are an army, you have to release the back row and not “keep them for a special occasion” like a nice pair of shoes.

2) Watch what your opponent is doing. Most of the time there will be a fairly logical conclusion to their move. Essentially don’t let ’em get one over on you.

3) Take your time. In 1984 Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov spent five months battling it out for the World Chess Championship title, which was then abandoned.

Chess makes a comeback… and even Usain Bolt is a fan

Short and sweet

Emer Martin

Read More