An Immodest Proposal

brianhere

In the run up to the AGM, when people's minds turn to the conundrum of popularizing chess in Ireland and indeed around the world, I thought I would propose two ideas:

1. In a good speech by Jonathan O'Connor, when he was ICU President, he made the point that there are many opportunities for good juniors to represent Ireland internationally, and also for good female players, but not for reasonably good adult male players. This is the interesting lacuna in the Irish set up maybe?

Understandably the ICU cannot afford to subsidize players to compete in international tournaments and then all we are left with, in terms of what your average non junior Irish player could aim for, are the Olympiads. But of course they are infrequent, involve only 4 or 5 players, and maybe the Irish team has not changed much over the decades anyway. So its not very likely an improving Irish player could break into that team and hence would never be able to represent Ireland in chess internationally which otherwise could be a good prize to aim for, as it seems to be in other Irish sports/games. If it was possible to plug this gap it could revitalize the game a little and also be a bridge for juniors to play internationally again after they have grown up out of Glorney, Robinson etc?

So here's my two bit idea, why not challenge say Ulster or England to a chess international? They probably have much the same problem so might like the idea and anyway I guess this is not such an earth shattering suggestion and no doubt proposed before.

But I am proposing a little twist to this, why not make it a monster Irish team? Why not have it 100 Irish players v. 100 English or Ulster ones or whatever? Chess is unusual in that respect in that there is no great limit to the amount you can have on a team unlike soccer or rugby etc which would be very chaotic with big numbers. There is no particular reason why that number couldn't play chess together? Of course the rule would be that the ICU would not pay the travel or accommodation expenses of the travelling Irish contingent, if held outside Ireland, but you still might get 100 Irish players prepared to come and pay their way if held in London say? If it was held there it might be a format of say 5 rapid games in one day, or at least 2 games in the one day in classic format, or maybe a weekend of say 6 classic games, because it might be unfair to expect people to travel if they only get one game.

Of course it could generate a great stir and almost any good Irish player might fancy him/herself's chances of making the team which should create more interest in Irish tournaments (if the 100 were to be selected by rating) or indeed in some Irish team qualifying tournament. The latter could take the form of say the best results achieved in a monster inter provincial match in Ireland (in the pattern of the GAA Railway Cups) which again could be interesting.

Anyway just an idea

2) The Second proposal I was going to make is an attempt to solve the even bigger question of the 'death of chess' which you sometimes hear mentioned especially since the advent of computers and the internet and the huge effect it has had on chess.

This talk was at fever pitch a few years ago but I admit that it has died down a little now after some exciting recent international tournaments as opposed to the boring endless draws that gave rise to the panic.

The panic is caused because a lot of people feel that chess has become more of a learned and memorized type of game than the real intellectual boxing match that it used to be, at least at the high level. Grandmasters spend forever poring over huge databases of previous games and openings and learn off the 'theory' and, to quite an extent, just regurgitate it on the board which in turn causes the game to lose its sparkle a bit for the average spectator and player.

Again I admit its not that huge a problem now but nonetheless I notice that Alexander Grischuk said during the Sinquefield Cup that he spent 10 hours during the rest day doing preparation for his next game. 10 hours, is this a game or some boring slog of an academic exercise? Meanwhile Michael Adams said during the World Cup that the databases are 'killing chess' because, among other things, they are destroying creativity (because virtually every possible move has been analyzed to death using the databases).

So to solve this problem many solutions have been proposed. One of the most well known was put forward by Bobby Fisher who invented a game that randomizes the back rank pieces and hence moves people off chess preparation. While that has many adherents, and is a good idea enough, there are drawbacks. One is that you are abandoning all the old theory of chess which, while overdone nowadays as I've said, nonetheless is at times very historic and interesting. The Ruy Lopez for example, which is still much used and talked about, was first described by a 17th century Spanish Jesuit. Hence if we could still play classic chess, plus that theory but not learn it off so much then it would be the ideal solution?

My idea then is simply to prepare the boards before the game by allowing the arbiters to make the first 10 moves. They would select, randomly, an opening and play it so that it creates a roughly equal position after the first 10 moves that they just play before the round begins and before the players take their seats. (We could specify that the resulting board has to have less than a 1 pawn advantage to any player, as set by such and such a chess engine.) Then the players come into the hall and the one who plays white (the pairings are decided by the usual Swiss method) randomly selects a number from a bowl or whatever and that gives him a given board where the 1st 10 moves have been played, as described.

Sure its not perfect in that players will get some hairy openings played for them but then good players can get draws in bad positions, and wins in drawn ones, so its still a good contest and should even itself out over a few games in a competition setting. But it will be done in such a way that the random created openings are chosen a from a huge selection (maybe 10,000 different possible openings say) so players will not have to prepare their games to the extent they do now. Also this preserves some theory and history, in fact commentators could have a list of what boards set up what named opening and could speculate on what players might get in the draw - and whether they would be suited to x or y opening that was prepared - so we haven't lost all that interesting opening history in the way that we do with Fisher chess.

It would be curious then to see if some Irish tournament wanted to experiment with such a setup if only for the top section (its hardly necessary for the lower ones)?

Anyway I just thought I'd throw out these couple of ideas and in any case it seems better debating this than all the personalized stuff out there!