CHESS
These pages contain stuff about chess, including some articles which I wrote for the BCM a while ago.
These pages contain stuff about chess, including some articles which I wrote for the BCM a while ago.
BOBBY FISCHER AGAINST THE WORLD
Directed by Liz Garbus (2011): HBO co-production
Running time 91 minutes plus special features, 28 minutes approx.
Available on DVD from Dogwoof, £9.99
This is the much-hyped documentary about the life and career of Bobby Fischer, told by means of contemporary interviews with friends, colleagues, journalists, organisers, etc, interleaved with archival footage and photos, to create an intriguing portrait of the most controversial and, in the view of many, the greatest chess player in the history of the game. I had heard a great deal about this film and wasn’t quite sure what to expect but I was certainly not disappointed. The centrepiece of the film is inevitably the famous 1972 world championship match between Fischer and Spassky, around which Garbus weaves the story of his life up to that point and the course of his life afterwards. Of course we all know the story forwards and backwards, and it has been told many times in the numerous books about Fischer and the match, but nonetheless it is still fascinating to watch again the footage of that momentous match and (for those of us old enough to remember the sixties and the seventies) to re-live those times: the world of Nixon, Kissinger and Brezhnev; of Watergate, Vietnam and race riots; above all of the Cold War, for which the match inevitably became a symbol.
There is much footage that I have never seen before, such as Bobby’s appearance on “I’ve Got A Secret”, the US equivalent of “What’s My Line” in 1958, as a callow fifteen year old in jeans and t-shirt, and on talk shows over the years up to his appearance on the Dick Cavett show in 1972, in addition to material often shown. Fischer emerges inevitably as a brash, arrogant, yet complex and tortured soul. We can chart his development as a player and a person from that crew-cut teenager to the smartly suited young man of the 1960s, up to the Reykjavik match, and from that to his sharp deterioration thereafter, both physically and mentally, until his re-emergence in the early 1990s, now as a bulky, lumbering, heavily bearded middle-aged man. The film is, inevitably, a bit light on hard chess content, but nonetheless there is a moderately good account of some of the early games of the 1972 match, such as the “bishop blunder” of game 1 and the masterpiece of game 6, but one cannot expect too much in this regard because the film is surely pitched at a non–specialist audience.
There are fascinating vignettes from people such as Larry Evans, his long time friend and collaborator, and Anthony Saidy who was close to Bobby at the time of the match, and with whom Bobby was staying in New York. (Saidy looks and sounds like he should be in the Sopranos - if he made me a draw offer I wouldn’t refuse!) Kasparov inevitably makes an appearance as an interviewee, and is predictably scathing about the 1992 re-match, just as Fischer was contemptuous of the Kasparov-Karpov matches of the 1980s which he insisted – without ever providing any evidence – were fixed. There is intriguing material about his mother, Regina, a remarkable woman, suspected of Communist sympathies and on whom the FBI had a bulky file, and whom he subsequently rejected.
There is much material on the post-1972 Fischer, who effectively retired from chess by making impossible demands on organisers and arbiters and became a recluse, and who then, after his sanctions-busting re-match against Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992, became an enforced exile, in various countries. Searching for Bobby Fischer became a furious pastime for sections of the media. Then there came his virulently anti-Semitic and anti-US comments, particularly after 9/11; and finally his arrest in Tokyo at the behest of the US, the offer of citizenship from Iceland, his move there, and finally his death in 2008 at the age of 64.
The special features include an item on the battle over Fischer’s estate between his Japanese wife (which seems to have been a marriage of convenience), his Filipino girlfriend and her daughter (whom she claims implausibly to be his) and his nephews, which is still being contested in the Icelandic courts. I have one slight gripe. The photograph of Fischer on the front cover of the DVD (and which is used in all the promotional material) has been accidentally reversed (fortunately he is not sitting at a proper chessboard so there are no board reversal issues).
There is a great deal of riveting archival material here, and some penetrating insights from a large cast of chess players, friends and commentators. It raises many questions, not all of which it can answer. Did Fischer desert chess after 1972 for fear of losing? Was he clinically psychotic towards the end of his life? What was the effect of his mother on his early development as a boy and did his monomaniacal concentration on the game warp his character? But, all in all a fascinating study of tormented genius, grippingly told.
Incidentally I have heard that there are plans to make at least two other films about Fischer. Are these documentaries or feature films? If the latter then I have always thought that James Woods would be ideal for the role of Fischer, due both to his facial and physical resemblance and his line in brash, arrogant characters.
Neville Twitchell
2011
Directed by Liz Garbus (2011): HBO co-production
Running time 91 minutes plus special features, 28 minutes approx.
Available on DVD from Dogwoof, £9.99
This is the much-hyped documentary about the life and career of Bobby Fischer, told by means of contemporary interviews with friends, colleagues, journalists, organisers, etc, interleaved with archival footage and photos, to create an intriguing portrait of the most controversial and, in the view of many, the greatest chess player in the history of the game. I had heard a great deal about this film and wasn’t quite sure what to expect but I was certainly not disappointed. The centrepiece of the film is inevitably the famous 1972 world championship match between Fischer and Spassky, around which Garbus weaves the story of his life up to that point and the course of his life afterwards. Of course we all know the story forwards and backwards, and it has been told many times in the numerous books about Fischer and the match, but nonetheless it is still fascinating to watch again the footage of that momentous match and (for those of us old enough to remember the sixties and the seventies) to re-live those times: the world of Nixon, Kissinger and Brezhnev; of Watergate, Vietnam and race riots; above all of the Cold War, for which the match inevitably became a symbol.
There is much footage that I have never seen before, such as Bobby’s appearance on “I’ve Got A Secret”, the US equivalent of “What’s My Line” in 1958, as a callow fifteen year old in jeans and t-shirt, and on talk shows over the years up to his appearance on the Dick Cavett show in 1972, in addition to material often shown. Fischer emerges inevitably as a brash, arrogant, yet complex and tortured soul. We can chart his development as a player and a person from that crew-cut teenager to the smartly suited young man of the 1960s, up to the Reykjavik match, and from that to his sharp deterioration thereafter, both physically and mentally, until his re-emergence in the early 1990s, now as a bulky, lumbering, heavily bearded middle-aged man. The film is, inevitably, a bit light on hard chess content, but nonetheless there is a moderately good account of some of the early games of the 1972 match, such as the “bishop blunder” of game 1 and the masterpiece of game 6, but one cannot expect too much in this regard because the film is surely pitched at a non–specialist audience.
There are fascinating vignettes from people such as Larry Evans, his long time friend and collaborator, and Anthony Saidy who was close to Bobby at the time of the match, and with whom Bobby was staying in New York. (Saidy looks and sounds like he should be in the Sopranos - if he made me a draw offer I wouldn’t refuse!) Kasparov inevitably makes an appearance as an interviewee, and is predictably scathing about the 1992 re-match, just as Fischer was contemptuous of the Kasparov-Karpov matches of the 1980s which he insisted – without ever providing any evidence – were fixed. There is intriguing material about his mother, Regina, a remarkable woman, suspected of Communist sympathies and on whom the FBI had a bulky file, and whom he subsequently rejected.
There is much material on the post-1972 Fischer, who effectively retired from chess by making impossible demands on organisers and arbiters and became a recluse, and who then, after his sanctions-busting re-match against Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992, became an enforced exile, in various countries. Searching for Bobby Fischer became a furious pastime for sections of the media. Then there came his virulently anti-Semitic and anti-US comments, particularly after 9/11; and finally his arrest in Tokyo at the behest of the US, the offer of citizenship from Iceland, his move there, and finally his death in 2008 at the age of 64.
The special features include an item on the battle over Fischer’s estate between his Japanese wife (which seems to have been a marriage of convenience), his Filipino girlfriend and her daughter (whom she claims implausibly to be his) and his nephews, which is still being contested in the Icelandic courts. I have one slight gripe. The photograph of Fischer on the front cover of the DVD (and which is used in all the promotional material) has been accidentally reversed (fortunately he is not sitting at a proper chessboard so there are no board reversal issues).
There is a great deal of riveting archival material here, and some penetrating insights from a large cast of chess players, friends and commentators. It raises many questions, not all of which it can answer. Did Fischer desert chess after 1972 for fear of losing? Was he clinically psychotic towards the end of his life? What was the effect of his mother on his early development as a boy and did his monomaniacal concentration on the game warp his character? But, all in all a fascinating study of tormented genius, grippingly told.
Incidentally I have heard that there are plans to make at least two other films about Fischer. Are these documentaries or feature films? If the latter then I have always thought that James Woods would be ideal for the role of Fischer, due both to his facial and physical resemblance and his line in brash, arrogant characters.
Neville Twitchell
2011
CHESS AND LEFT-HANDEDNESS
Are chess players disproportionately left-handed? I ask this merely because of the old canard that left-handed people are more creative than right-handers (e.g. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt and other such arty types) and the fact that creativity is supposedly an essential, or at any rate useful, component of chess expertise.
Doing some research on this I came across an interesting article on the Chessbase website by a couple of psychologists, Dr Guillermo Campitelli and Prof. Fernand Gobet (www.chessbase.com: “Handedness, practice and talent in chess”, 15th January 2009) which discussed a recent survey of Argentinean chess players of varying strengths, ranging from GM down to unrated players, and which found, inter alia, a somewhat higher proportion of lefties or ambidexters than would be expected by chance - 17.9% of the players surveyed as against 10.2% for a control sample of the general population. This was consistent across all skill levels. Campitelli and Gobet argue that this may be because chess is a “visuo-spatial” game and that it tends to be the right hemisphere of the brain that controls “visuo-spatial” functions and, given the way the brain is wired up, it is also the right side of the brain that tends to control the left side of the body. This substantiates an earlier questionnaire-based study conducted by Cranberg and Albert in 1988 amongst US chess players in which they found a similar over-representation of left-handers in their sample of chess players.
This conflicts slightly with the results of my own researches when, a few years ago, I went round the playing hall at the British Championships noting the handedness of all the competitors in the Championship (sad fellow that I am) and found that only three out of seventy were lefties (going by the hand they wrote with), which is a very small proportion, at less than 5%, and surely lower than the proportion in the general population which is probably at least10%. Of course they may have been writing the moves down with one hand and moving the pieces with the other (just in order to confuse me) and it raises the question of how you define handedness, but I would think that most people use the same hand for moving the piece, pressing the clock and writing it down. As a sinistral myself I should think it quite possible that in all my decades of playing the game, consisting of literally hundreds of thousands or even millions of moves in aggregate, I have perhaps never ever moved a piece with my right hand. Somehow the move just has to flow from my brain through my left hand and onto the board, which is not to say of course that the outcome of this complex cerebral/manual process ever produces anything approximating to a good move.
Incidentally, one perpetual irritant, speaking as a leftie, is playing in a cramped venue where the boards are almost touching and having my score sheet on the left hand side, and then having to fight a territorial battle throughout the game against the player to my left who, if he is right-handed, has tried to put his score sheet where mine is, with much jockeying for position and knocking of hands (often to the point of overshadowing the main battle on the board against my opponent.)
I am not sure there is any record of the handedness of players (FIDE log many things but not this). I know that for a long time we only had one left-handed GM in the shape of Mark Hebden, but there may be others now. I don’t know about great players of the past, but probably there were very few because left-handedness was much less common then, although Tal had a deformed right hand and may therefore have moved, and possibly written, left-handed - certainly the former. My efforts to ascertain this from fleeting and grainy snatches of players on You Tube have not yielded any clear results. I have seen it suggested in various places that Kasparov is left-handed but I am pretty sure that he is not. However, the idea that Kasparov is left-handed may originate with a joke I came across on the internet in which an airline passenger finds himself sitting next to Kasparov on a long flight. Kasparov challenges the man to a game of chess for a substantial stake and the man says that that would be ridiculous because Kasparov would be far too strong for him, so Kasparov says he will even things up by playing left-handed. The man (who is evidently none too bright) agrees and they play and Kasparov wins easily despite this “handicap”. Afterwards the man tells his friend who says – “You are a fool. Of course he beat you. He really is left-handed!”
This, by the way, reminds me of an anecdote which may well be apocryphal about Emanuel Lasker, who, whilst world champion, found himself sitting opposite another man on a railway journey, and the fellow passenger, who has no idea who Lasker is, challenges him to a game. Lasker decides to have some fun at the man’s expense and agrees. He plays very badly and deliberately loses the game, but then says to the man that he was handicapped by playing with his queen, and that he is a much better player without his queen! The man thinks Lasker is crazy but they play another game in which Lasker plays minus his queen and, now playing to his full strength, beats the man. The man is dumbfounded, and says that Lasker must really be a very strong player. So they play another game on level terms and Lasker again deliberately loses and then another in which again Lasker spots his queen and wins. This goes on indefinitely, and ultimately the poor man leaves the carriage utterly nonplussed. I haven’t a clue what the moral of this story is.
Neville Twitchell
17th May 2012
(appeared originally in the BCM)
Are chess players disproportionately left-handed? I ask this merely because of the old canard that left-handed people are more creative than right-handers (e.g. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt and other such arty types) and the fact that creativity is supposedly an essential, or at any rate useful, component of chess expertise.
Doing some research on this I came across an interesting article on the Chessbase website by a couple of psychologists, Dr Guillermo Campitelli and Prof. Fernand Gobet (www.chessbase.com: “Handedness, practice and talent in chess”, 15th January 2009) which discussed a recent survey of Argentinean chess players of varying strengths, ranging from GM down to unrated players, and which found, inter alia, a somewhat higher proportion of lefties or ambidexters than would be expected by chance - 17.9% of the players surveyed as against 10.2% for a control sample of the general population. This was consistent across all skill levels. Campitelli and Gobet argue that this may be because chess is a “visuo-spatial” game and that it tends to be the right hemisphere of the brain that controls “visuo-spatial” functions and, given the way the brain is wired up, it is also the right side of the brain that tends to control the left side of the body. This substantiates an earlier questionnaire-based study conducted by Cranberg and Albert in 1988 amongst US chess players in which they found a similar over-representation of left-handers in their sample of chess players.
This conflicts slightly with the results of my own researches when, a few years ago, I went round the playing hall at the British Championships noting the handedness of all the competitors in the Championship (sad fellow that I am) and found that only three out of seventy were lefties (going by the hand they wrote with), which is a very small proportion, at less than 5%, and surely lower than the proportion in the general population which is probably at least10%. Of course they may have been writing the moves down with one hand and moving the pieces with the other (just in order to confuse me) and it raises the question of how you define handedness, but I would think that most people use the same hand for moving the piece, pressing the clock and writing it down. As a sinistral myself I should think it quite possible that in all my decades of playing the game, consisting of literally hundreds of thousands or even millions of moves in aggregate, I have perhaps never ever moved a piece with my right hand. Somehow the move just has to flow from my brain through my left hand and onto the board, which is not to say of course that the outcome of this complex cerebral/manual process ever produces anything approximating to a good move.
Incidentally, one perpetual irritant, speaking as a leftie, is playing in a cramped venue where the boards are almost touching and having my score sheet on the left hand side, and then having to fight a territorial battle throughout the game against the player to my left who, if he is right-handed, has tried to put his score sheet where mine is, with much jockeying for position and knocking of hands (often to the point of overshadowing the main battle on the board against my opponent.)
I am not sure there is any record of the handedness of players (FIDE log many things but not this). I know that for a long time we only had one left-handed GM in the shape of Mark Hebden, but there may be others now. I don’t know about great players of the past, but probably there were very few because left-handedness was much less common then, although Tal had a deformed right hand and may therefore have moved, and possibly written, left-handed - certainly the former. My efforts to ascertain this from fleeting and grainy snatches of players on You Tube have not yielded any clear results. I have seen it suggested in various places that Kasparov is left-handed but I am pretty sure that he is not. However, the idea that Kasparov is left-handed may originate with a joke I came across on the internet in which an airline passenger finds himself sitting next to Kasparov on a long flight. Kasparov challenges the man to a game of chess for a substantial stake and the man says that that would be ridiculous because Kasparov would be far too strong for him, so Kasparov says he will even things up by playing left-handed. The man (who is evidently none too bright) agrees and they play and Kasparov wins easily despite this “handicap”. Afterwards the man tells his friend who says – “You are a fool. Of course he beat you. He really is left-handed!”
This, by the way, reminds me of an anecdote which may well be apocryphal about Emanuel Lasker, who, whilst world champion, found himself sitting opposite another man on a railway journey, and the fellow passenger, who has no idea who Lasker is, challenges him to a game. Lasker decides to have some fun at the man’s expense and agrees. He plays very badly and deliberately loses the game, but then says to the man that he was handicapped by playing with his queen, and that he is a much better player without his queen! The man thinks Lasker is crazy but they play another game in which Lasker plays minus his queen and, now playing to his full strength, beats the man. The man is dumbfounded, and says that Lasker must really be a very strong player. So they play another game on level terms and Lasker again deliberately loses and then another in which again Lasker spots his queen and wins. This goes on indefinitely, and ultimately the poor man leaves the carriage utterly nonplussed. I haven’t a clue what the moral of this story is.
Neville Twitchell
17th May 2012
(appeared originally in the BCM)
CHESS AND POLITICS
Mention in the November 2011 issue (of the BCM) of Rachel Reeves and her appointment as shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury by Ed Miliband led me to note the co-incidence that there are at least two other prominent former chess players in the House of Commons at the moment in the shape of the Eagle sisters, Angela and Maria, both of whom held ministerial office in the last Labour government, and both of whom were very active in junior chess circles in the 1970s. Angela was the joint British Girls under-18 champion in 1976. Even more co-incidentally Angela, who is now shadow Leader of the House, preceded Rachel in exactly the same shadow portfolio that Rachel now holds. This prompted me to think about chess and politics in general, and about who and how many former (or current) chess players have gone into politics, how they have progressed and whether there might be a connection between the two. I was prompted also by a very interesting thread on the ECF Forum about chess and politics that began around about the time of the last general election (http://www.ecforum.org.uk) which can be found under the heading “Not Chess/General Election” begun on 17th April 2010.
Of course many politicians claim to be chess players and often use chess terminology (usually inappropriately) as part of their political discourse, much in the manner of football commentators who are fond of claiming that “it is like a game of chess out there”. Charles Clarke (former Labour home secretary) is the son of Sir Richard (Otto) Clarke, the man who invented the BCF/ECF grading system in the 1950s and claims to play the game, and Prime Minister David Cameron recently opined that the forthcoming Brussels summit was going to be like a game of chess, though admitting that he wasn’t a very good player. Had he been more au fait with the game he might have said that it would be like a simul with him taking on twenty-six strong players (including grandmasters Sarkozy and Merkel). Did he win the simul 26-0 or lose it 26-0? Adjudication may be required. Or even a referendum!
But I am talking here about politicians who have played the game to a reasonable standard and at competitive level, which means in practice that they would certainly have had a grade at one time or another. At the last general election several notable chess players stood for Parliament. The following is not meant to be an exhaustive list, and if I have omitted anyone or included anyone in error I apologise. Certainly, in addition to Rachel Reeves and the Eagle sisters already mentioned (all Labour, all female and all elected) there were, in no particular order:- Alan Reid (Scotland, ELO 2205) elected as a Liberal Democrat for Argyll and Bute; David Mowat (Wilmslow, ECF 134) elected as Conservative MP for Warrington South; Jonathan Arnott (Candidate Master, Sheffield University, 200 ECF) UKIP candidate for Sheffield SE and I believe general secretary of UKIP; William (Bill) Linton (Mushrooms, 182) stood for the Greens in Enfield North; and Sally McIntosh (Ashfield 115) stood for the Liberal Democrats in Mid-Derbyshire. In addition there were others who may be chess players but who do not have a current grade and may be only social players such as Charlotte Atkins who stood for Labour in Staffs, Moorlands and Rajeev Thacker who stood for the Greens in Wimbledon. In the past Essex and Writtle stalwart Chris Fegan stood for Labour in Colchester in the 2001 general election (and in 1997); Evan Harris, who was active in promoting the game was Lib Dem MP for Oxford and Abingdon until losing his seat at the last election and I remember a player called Nick Amor, who stood for the nascent SDP at Brentwood in the 1983 election. Victor Litvin (Camden, 119) I believe stood under various extraordinary political labels in the 1980s. Brian Walden, former Labour MP and later presenter of ITV’s flagship current affairs programme Weekend World was a very strong player in his youth.
Going further back in history there have been several notable chess playing politicians. Julius Silverman, Labour MP for Birmingham seats from 1945-1983, was a very strong player and once played a game that often graces the anthologies. Andrew Bonar Law, the “Unknown Prime Minister”, was a very strong player by all accounts, and once played Capablanca in a consultation simultaneous at the House of Commons in 1919, a few years before becoming prime minister. Going even further back there was Marmaduke Wyvill, Liberal MP for Richmond in North Yorkshire in the 1840s to the 1860s and one of the greatest players of his day.
[Event "House of Commons sim"]
[Site "London"]
[Date "1919.12.02"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Capablanca, Jose Raul"]
[Black "Allies"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C44"]
[PlyCount "91"]
[EventDate "1919.12.??"]
[EventType "simul"]
[EventRounds "1"]
[EventCountry "ENG"]
[Source "ChessBase"]
[SourceDate "2002.11.25"]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. c3 d5 4. Qa4 dxe4 5. Nxe5 Qd5 6. Nxc6 bxc6 7. Bc4 Qd7 8.
d3 exd3 9. O-O Bd6 10. Bg5 Ne7 11. Nd2 O-O 12. Bxd3 f6 13. Qc4+ Kh8 14. Be3 a5
15. Bc2 Nf5 16. Bxf5 Qxf5 17. Qxc6 Ba6 18. Rfe1 Rfb8 19. Ne4 Be5 20. Nc5 Bb5
21. Qf3 Qxf3 22. gxf3 Bc6 23. f4 Bd6 24. b3 Rb5 25. Ne6 Rh5 26. c4 Rh4 27. c5
Rg4+ 28. Kf1 Bb5+ 29. Re2 Bxe2+ 30. Kxe2 Be7 31. Nxc7 Rc8 32. Nd5 Bd8 33. Rc1
Rh4 34. c6 Rh5 35. Rc5 Bc7 36. a4 Rxh2 37. Nxc7 Rxc7 38. Rxa5 h5 39. Rc5 g6 40.
b4 Rh1 41. b5 Rb1 42. a5 h4 43. b6 Rxc6 44. Rxc6 h3 45. a6 h2 46. a7 1-0
Event "Birmingham"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "1937.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Silverman, Julius"]
[Black "Eliskases, Erich"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C33"]
[PlyCount "39"]
[EventDate "2010.04.25"]
[SourceDate "2010.04.25"]
1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. Nc3 c6 5. Nf3 d5 6. exd5 cxd5 7. Bb3 Bd6 8.
O-O O-O 9. d4 Be6 10. Ne5 Bxe5 11. dxe5 Qb6+ 12. Kh1 Ng4 13. Qe2 d4 14. Nd5
Bxd5 15. Bxd5 Ne3 16. Bxe3 dxe3 17. Rxf4 Nc6 18. Qh5 Qxb2 19. Bxf7+ Kh8 20.
Qxh7+ 1-0
Is there a tendency for chess players to be on the left or right politically? One might think that the very “middle-class” nature of the game would lead to a majority of players being Conservative, but on the other hand the very intellectual reputation of the game might suggest that players would tend to be on the left. The evidence, though it is of course very sketchy, suggests that probably the balance reflects the population at large, and that chess players are, at least in this respect, very typical of the general population. Certainly the evidence of players who stood at the last election demonstrates a fair spread of party affiliations and political sympathies.
If one looks at the politics of great players, very few were really politically minded. The politics of some world champions does not bear too close an examination (Alekhine and Fischer) whilst in the days of the Soviet Union most leading players in that country had at least to pay lip service to the Communist Party if they wanted their careers to prosper, but the actual nature of their views is difficult to ascertain. Certainly some, such as Botvinnik, Petrosian and Karpov, were strong supporters of the party, whilst others such as Bronstein, Spassky and Korchnoi much less so. Since his retirement from the game Kasparov has of course moved in to politics as the leader of a right-wing umbrella group hostile to Putin, and he may still have political ambitions though they seem unlikely to be fulfilled at this stage.
Do the disciplines of the game nurture political skills? Chess demands ruthless objectivity, clear analysis and brutal honesty, all characteristics for which politicians are…er… not always notable for exhibiting. Of those who kindly responded to my enquiries on this subject David Mowat took the view that chess demanded independence of thought, rigour and discipline and that these were useful for any career. Sally McIntosh thought that chess players were unusually highly interested in politics and that they are good at decision making and strategic planning though less skilled at campaigning. Bill Linton, on the other hand, was very sceptical about the transferability of skills, especially the requirement to keep quiet during games! Of course the one thing that chess and politics share is their intensely adversarial character. All in all I think it is fair to say that chess players are perhaps somewhat more politically aware, and maybe more politically active, than the average person, but that probably they do not display any particular bias to left or right.
Neville Twitchell
December 2011
Mention in the November 2011 issue (of the BCM) of Rachel Reeves and her appointment as shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury by Ed Miliband led me to note the co-incidence that there are at least two other prominent former chess players in the House of Commons at the moment in the shape of the Eagle sisters, Angela and Maria, both of whom held ministerial office in the last Labour government, and both of whom were very active in junior chess circles in the 1970s. Angela was the joint British Girls under-18 champion in 1976. Even more co-incidentally Angela, who is now shadow Leader of the House, preceded Rachel in exactly the same shadow portfolio that Rachel now holds. This prompted me to think about chess and politics in general, and about who and how many former (or current) chess players have gone into politics, how they have progressed and whether there might be a connection between the two. I was prompted also by a very interesting thread on the ECF Forum about chess and politics that began around about the time of the last general election (http://www.ecforum.org.uk) which can be found under the heading “Not Chess/General Election” begun on 17th April 2010.
Of course many politicians claim to be chess players and often use chess terminology (usually inappropriately) as part of their political discourse, much in the manner of football commentators who are fond of claiming that “it is like a game of chess out there”. Charles Clarke (former Labour home secretary) is the son of Sir Richard (Otto) Clarke, the man who invented the BCF/ECF grading system in the 1950s and claims to play the game, and Prime Minister David Cameron recently opined that the forthcoming Brussels summit was going to be like a game of chess, though admitting that he wasn’t a very good player. Had he been more au fait with the game he might have said that it would be like a simul with him taking on twenty-six strong players (including grandmasters Sarkozy and Merkel). Did he win the simul 26-0 or lose it 26-0? Adjudication may be required. Or even a referendum!
But I am talking here about politicians who have played the game to a reasonable standard and at competitive level, which means in practice that they would certainly have had a grade at one time or another. At the last general election several notable chess players stood for Parliament. The following is not meant to be an exhaustive list, and if I have omitted anyone or included anyone in error I apologise. Certainly, in addition to Rachel Reeves and the Eagle sisters already mentioned (all Labour, all female and all elected) there were, in no particular order:- Alan Reid (Scotland, ELO 2205) elected as a Liberal Democrat for Argyll and Bute; David Mowat (Wilmslow, ECF 134) elected as Conservative MP for Warrington South; Jonathan Arnott (Candidate Master, Sheffield University, 200 ECF) UKIP candidate for Sheffield SE and I believe general secretary of UKIP; William (Bill) Linton (Mushrooms, 182) stood for the Greens in Enfield North; and Sally McIntosh (Ashfield 115) stood for the Liberal Democrats in Mid-Derbyshire. In addition there were others who may be chess players but who do not have a current grade and may be only social players such as Charlotte Atkins who stood for Labour in Staffs, Moorlands and Rajeev Thacker who stood for the Greens in Wimbledon. In the past Essex and Writtle stalwart Chris Fegan stood for Labour in Colchester in the 2001 general election (and in 1997); Evan Harris, who was active in promoting the game was Lib Dem MP for Oxford and Abingdon until losing his seat at the last election and I remember a player called Nick Amor, who stood for the nascent SDP at Brentwood in the 1983 election. Victor Litvin (Camden, 119) I believe stood under various extraordinary political labels in the 1980s. Brian Walden, former Labour MP and later presenter of ITV’s flagship current affairs programme Weekend World was a very strong player in his youth.
Going further back in history there have been several notable chess playing politicians. Julius Silverman, Labour MP for Birmingham seats from 1945-1983, was a very strong player and once played a game that often graces the anthologies. Andrew Bonar Law, the “Unknown Prime Minister”, was a very strong player by all accounts, and once played Capablanca in a consultation simultaneous at the House of Commons in 1919, a few years before becoming prime minister. Going even further back there was Marmaduke Wyvill, Liberal MP for Richmond in North Yorkshire in the 1840s to the 1860s and one of the greatest players of his day.
[Event "House of Commons sim"]
[Site "London"]
[Date "1919.12.02"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Capablanca, Jose Raul"]
[Black "Allies"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C44"]
[PlyCount "91"]
[EventDate "1919.12.??"]
[EventType "simul"]
[EventRounds "1"]
[EventCountry "ENG"]
[Source "ChessBase"]
[SourceDate "2002.11.25"]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. c3 d5 4. Qa4 dxe4 5. Nxe5 Qd5 6. Nxc6 bxc6 7. Bc4 Qd7 8.
d3 exd3 9. O-O Bd6 10. Bg5 Ne7 11. Nd2 O-O 12. Bxd3 f6 13. Qc4+ Kh8 14. Be3 a5
15. Bc2 Nf5 16. Bxf5 Qxf5 17. Qxc6 Ba6 18. Rfe1 Rfb8 19. Ne4 Be5 20. Nc5 Bb5
21. Qf3 Qxf3 22. gxf3 Bc6 23. f4 Bd6 24. b3 Rb5 25. Ne6 Rh5 26. c4 Rh4 27. c5
Rg4+ 28. Kf1 Bb5+ 29. Re2 Bxe2+ 30. Kxe2 Be7 31. Nxc7 Rc8 32. Nd5 Bd8 33. Rc1
Rh4 34. c6 Rh5 35. Rc5 Bc7 36. a4 Rxh2 37. Nxc7 Rxc7 38. Rxa5 h5 39. Rc5 g6 40.
b4 Rh1 41. b5 Rb1 42. a5 h4 43. b6 Rxc6 44. Rxc6 h3 45. a6 h2 46. a7 1-0
Event "Birmingham"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "1937.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Silverman, Julius"]
[Black "Eliskases, Erich"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C33"]
[PlyCount "39"]
[EventDate "2010.04.25"]
[SourceDate "2010.04.25"]
1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. Nc3 c6 5. Nf3 d5 6. exd5 cxd5 7. Bb3 Bd6 8.
O-O O-O 9. d4 Be6 10. Ne5 Bxe5 11. dxe5 Qb6+ 12. Kh1 Ng4 13. Qe2 d4 14. Nd5
Bxd5 15. Bxd5 Ne3 16. Bxe3 dxe3 17. Rxf4 Nc6 18. Qh5 Qxb2 19. Bxf7+ Kh8 20.
Qxh7+ 1-0
Is there a tendency for chess players to be on the left or right politically? One might think that the very “middle-class” nature of the game would lead to a majority of players being Conservative, but on the other hand the very intellectual reputation of the game might suggest that players would tend to be on the left. The evidence, though it is of course very sketchy, suggests that probably the balance reflects the population at large, and that chess players are, at least in this respect, very typical of the general population. Certainly the evidence of players who stood at the last election demonstrates a fair spread of party affiliations and political sympathies.
If one looks at the politics of great players, very few were really politically minded. The politics of some world champions does not bear too close an examination (Alekhine and Fischer) whilst in the days of the Soviet Union most leading players in that country had at least to pay lip service to the Communist Party if they wanted their careers to prosper, but the actual nature of their views is difficult to ascertain. Certainly some, such as Botvinnik, Petrosian and Karpov, were strong supporters of the party, whilst others such as Bronstein, Spassky and Korchnoi much less so. Since his retirement from the game Kasparov has of course moved in to politics as the leader of a right-wing umbrella group hostile to Putin, and he may still have political ambitions though they seem unlikely to be fulfilled at this stage.
Do the disciplines of the game nurture political skills? Chess demands ruthless objectivity, clear analysis and brutal honesty, all characteristics for which politicians are…er… not always notable for exhibiting. Of those who kindly responded to my enquiries on this subject David Mowat took the view that chess demanded independence of thought, rigour and discipline and that these were useful for any career. Sally McIntosh thought that chess players were unusually highly interested in politics and that they are good at decision making and strategic planning though less skilled at campaigning. Bill Linton, on the other hand, was very sceptical about the transferability of skills, especially the requirement to keep quiet during games! Of course the one thing that chess and politics share is their intensely adversarial character. All in all I think it is fair to say that chess players are perhaps somewhat more politically aware, and maybe more politically active, than the average person, but that probably they do not display any particular bias to left or right.
Neville Twitchell
December 2011
CHESS PLAYING AND OTHER TALENTS
Given the reputation that chess players have for being monomaniacal obsessives it is surprising that they attain any degree of excellence in other spheres of activity, but nonetheless they sometimes do. Of course many good and average players are outstanding in other fields, and some people who are outstanding in certain walks of life play chess though, notwithstanding their claims to be avid players, their standard is, alas, usually abysmal (no names - no pack drill). But I am interested here in people who are both outstanding players and eminent in some other activity. To qualify as an outstanding player for the purposes of this article one should be, ideally, at least master and maybe even grandmaster strength, and while of course there may not necessarily be any objective measure of excellence in the other field concerned, there are probably measures or indicators of prowess.
One obvious candidate is Emanuel Lasker who, in addition to being world champion for a record twenty-seven years, was a mathematician of the front rank with a doctorate and a number of published works on mathematical topics under his belt. He also wrote on philosophy and, with his brother Berthold, even penned a drama, which though was not commercially successful. Mathematics is of course a discipline often associated with chess, and quite a number of players have been brilliant mathematicians and vice versa. Obvious and recent examples here are Jonathan Mestel and John Nunn. Mestel is a professor of applied mathematics and Nunn has a doctorate in mathematics and was believed to be, at age fifteen, the youngest Oxford undergraduate since Thomas Wolsey in the late fifteenth century. Both are also brilliant chess problemists, and it may well be that this aspect of chess is particularly well suited to the mathematically minded. Max Euwe was of course a maths teacher even whilst world champion.
Mestel, one should mention, is also a very good bridge player, and there is a lot of overlap between these two games, which may be slightly surprising since there is not much similarity in a structural sense (though Lasker wrote a treatise on mathematical aspects of card play).This brings us onto other board games where you might expect a lot of overlap, but there appears to be very little. Even draughts/checkers, very much a kindred game, doesn’t tend to produce an overlap of champions or grandmasters (or proficients as I think they call them). Edward Lasker, the German-American IM wrote on chess, American checkers and Go, and was apparently quite a strong Go player (though not the equivalent of master strength) and founded the American Go Association. A lot of chess players are poker players, however, reflecting perhaps the current obsession with that game, and of course incentivised by the monetary rewards. There is at least one famous chess organiser/arbiter who is an outstanding poker player. Perhaps the ability to remain poker-faced is very useful in chess, where you need to keep a cool countenance when you know you have blundered but hope your opponent won’t notice, or when you are trying to pull of a bluff, and need to look confident when playing it. Both Mestel and Lasker, incidentally, have actually invented games; Lasker a game called Lascas (essentially a variant of draughts) and Mestel a computer game which was evolved into ‘Philosopher’s Quest’, and though I don’t know how strong they are or were at their own games, they may reasonably be assumed to be very good.
Much less likely is it that a chess player is outstanding in some physical, artistic or non-cerebral field. There is Marcel Duchamp who was a player of master strength as well as being by some accounts one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, prominent in the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Former world champion Vasily Smyslov was an opera singer of renown, who occasionally gave recitals at chess events, Soviet GM Mark Taimanov was a concert pianist and Max Harmonist, a German master of the late nineteenth century, was a professional ballet dancer, surely the most unlikely sphere of accomplishment for a chess player. Music, like mathematics, is another discipline which seems to overlap considerably with chess.
Sporting prowess is another matter. Here I fear chess players tend to fall down badly (perhaps literally as well as figuratively), notwithstanding the current fad for “chess-boxing”. The pre-eminent exception to this rule is Simen Agdestein, who was not only Norway’s leading player for many years (until the rise of Magnus Carlsen), a GM, winner of the Norwegian championships seven times and represented Norway on top board in seven Olympiads, but also played professional football and represented Norway eight times in internationals. This is an achievement almost without parallel in modern times where the standards of competition are so high (in both chess and football). It is hard to think of another chess player of master strength who has also represented his country at sport, though Sir George Thomas springs to mind. In addition to being one of England’s leading players, twice British champion, equal first at Hastings 1934-5 with tournament victories over several of the greats of the day, granted the master title retrospectively, he was also a badminton champion who won the ‘All England Open Badminton Championship’ (effectively the World Championship) twenty one times between 1906 and 1928, and an outstanding tennis player who reached the semi finals of the men’s doubles at Wimbledon in 1911. Capablanca represented Columbia University at baseball but that is not really on a par.
Of course outstanding chess players as heroes abound in fiction, but that doesn’t count, since often the writers clearly know nothing about chess, and have no idea what chess mastery consists of. One thinks of the spy master and chess master, Kronsteen in From Russia With Love. That enables me to segue neatly into the subject of my article in the March BCM about the portrayal of chess players on film. I have since had the misfortune to see Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows and all my worst fears have been realised, with surely the mother of all ‘chess game as cheesy metaphor’ scenes, with Holmes and Moriarty playing a game atop the Reichenbach falls whilst battling it out physically and mentally. Chess players - Avoid this film!
Neville Twitchell
18th April 2012
(appeared originally in the BCM)
Given the reputation that chess players have for being monomaniacal obsessives it is surprising that they attain any degree of excellence in other spheres of activity, but nonetheless they sometimes do. Of course many good and average players are outstanding in other fields, and some people who are outstanding in certain walks of life play chess though, notwithstanding their claims to be avid players, their standard is, alas, usually abysmal (no names - no pack drill). But I am interested here in people who are both outstanding players and eminent in some other activity. To qualify as an outstanding player for the purposes of this article one should be, ideally, at least master and maybe even grandmaster strength, and while of course there may not necessarily be any objective measure of excellence in the other field concerned, there are probably measures or indicators of prowess.
One obvious candidate is Emanuel Lasker who, in addition to being world champion for a record twenty-seven years, was a mathematician of the front rank with a doctorate and a number of published works on mathematical topics under his belt. He also wrote on philosophy and, with his brother Berthold, even penned a drama, which though was not commercially successful. Mathematics is of course a discipline often associated with chess, and quite a number of players have been brilliant mathematicians and vice versa. Obvious and recent examples here are Jonathan Mestel and John Nunn. Mestel is a professor of applied mathematics and Nunn has a doctorate in mathematics and was believed to be, at age fifteen, the youngest Oxford undergraduate since Thomas Wolsey in the late fifteenth century. Both are also brilliant chess problemists, and it may well be that this aspect of chess is particularly well suited to the mathematically minded. Max Euwe was of course a maths teacher even whilst world champion.
Mestel, one should mention, is also a very good bridge player, and there is a lot of overlap between these two games, which may be slightly surprising since there is not much similarity in a structural sense (though Lasker wrote a treatise on mathematical aspects of card play).This brings us onto other board games where you might expect a lot of overlap, but there appears to be very little. Even draughts/checkers, very much a kindred game, doesn’t tend to produce an overlap of champions or grandmasters (or proficients as I think they call them). Edward Lasker, the German-American IM wrote on chess, American checkers and Go, and was apparently quite a strong Go player (though not the equivalent of master strength) and founded the American Go Association. A lot of chess players are poker players, however, reflecting perhaps the current obsession with that game, and of course incentivised by the monetary rewards. There is at least one famous chess organiser/arbiter who is an outstanding poker player. Perhaps the ability to remain poker-faced is very useful in chess, where you need to keep a cool countenance when you know you have blundered but hope your opponent won’t notice, or when you are trying to pull of a bluff, and need to look confident when playing it. Both Mestel and Lasker, incidentally, have actually invented games; Lasker a game called Lascas (essentially a variant of draughts) and Mestel a computer game which was evolved into ‘Philosopher’s Quest’, and though I don’t know how strong they are or were at their own games, they may reasonably be assumed to be very good.
Much less likely is it that a chess player is outstanding in some physical, artistic or non-cerebral field. There is Marcel Duchamp who was a player of master strength as well as being by some accounts one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, prominent in the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Former world champion Vasily Smyslov was an opera singer of renown, who occasionally gave recitals at chess events, Soviet GM Mark Taimanov was a concert pianist and Max Harmonist, a German master of the late nineteenth century, was a professional ballet dancer, surely the most unlikely sphere of accomplishment for a chess player. Music, like mathematics, is another discipline which seems to overlap considerably with chess.
Sporting prowess is another matter. Here I fear chess players tend to fall down badly (perhaps literally as well as figuratively), notwithstanding the current fad for “chess-boxing”. The pre-eminent exception to this rule is Simen Agdestein, who was not only Norway’s leading player for many years (until the rise of Magnus Carlsen), a GM, winner of the Norwegian championships seven times and represented Norway on top board in seven Olympiads, but also played professional football and represented Norway eight times in internationals. This is an achievement almost without parallel in modern times where the standards of competition are so high (in both chess and football). It is hard to think of another chess player of master strength who has also represented his country at sport, though Sir George Thomas springs to mind. In addition to being one of England’s leading players, twice British champion, equal first at Hastings 1934-5 with tournament victories over several of the greats of the day, granted the master title retrospectively, he was also a badminton champion who won the ‘All England Open Badminton Championship’ (effectively the World Championship) twenty one times between 1906 and 1928, and an outstanding tennis player who reached the semi finals of the men’s doubles at Wimbledon in 1911. Capablanca represented Columbia University at baseball but that is not really on a par.
Of course outstanding chess players as heroes abound in fiction, but that doesn’t count, since often the writers clearly know nothing about chess, and have no idea what chess mastery consists of. One thinks of the spy master and chess master, Kronsteen in From Russia With Love. That enables me to segue neatly into the subject of my article in the March BCM about the portrayal of chess players on film. I have since had the misfortune to see Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows and all my worst fears have been realised, with surely the mother of all ‘chess game as cheesy metaphor’ scenes, with Holmes and Moriarty playing a game atop the Reichenbach falls whilst battling it out physically and mentally. Chess players - Avoid this film!
Neville Twitchell
18th April 2012
(appeared originally in the BCM)
THE PORTRAYAL OF CHESS AND CHESS PLAYERS IN FILM AND ON TELEVISION
Like most of us, I imagine, I have often been intrigued and irritated (but usually irritated) by the presentation of chess players in film and television drama. Their portrayal and that of the chess scene in general is usually, one need scarcely say, hopelessly adrift of reality. Chess playing characters often fall into one of several stereotypes: the teenage nerd/computer geek; the dastardly villain; the old men in the park; and of course the hyper-driven and possibly deranged grandmaster/world champion. Moreover, chess is often used by writers and directors as a visual metaphor for devious plot-making, or is designed to confer a spurious patina of intellectualism on the characters in the belief (right or wrong) that chess is to be equated with a high level of intelligence. We are all familiar with the typical scene of the characters plotting some nefarious conspiracy whilst casually playing a game, or at any rate seated at a chessboard twiddling the pieces, with a lot of heavy-handed chessic metaphor thrown in for good measure.
For this we have Sherlock Holmes (or rather Conan Doyle) to thank, at least in part. In The Retired Colourman, the last of the Holmes stories (according to some sources) Holmes comments that: “Amberley excelled at chess – one mark, Watson, of a scheming mind.” In fact Holmes himself is often depicted on screen as a chess player, distractedly pondering a board whilst deliberating on a case, though I don’t think that anywhere does Conan Doyle actually write a scene involving Holmes at the chessboard. I believe that in the recent Sherlock Holmes film, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (Guy Ritchie, 2011) he plays chess against Moriarty and that chess is a leitmotif in the film (unfortunately I avoided seeing the film on its release, fearing that the “Hollywoodisation” of Holmes would be more than I could bear). Researching this on the Internet movie database (http://uk.imdb.com) I discovered that there is a chess adviser credited, under “Other crew”, and that it is none other than our own Adam Raoof!
This called to mind my own solitary (and very unlikely) claim to fame in that I once acted as technical adviser on the Film X-Men 3. For this I had to set up plausible chess positions on some boards which were the backdrop to the final (post-credit) sequence of the movie. Here, once again it was clear that chess was being used as a device or prop to convey the machinations of a devilish mind, with the villain seated at a chessboard in the park. I spent about eight hours at a freezing outdoor lot at Pinewood Studios whilst the director went through thirty takes of this very short scene before he was completely satisfied, and then went to see the film on release and stood staring at the screen, in a by now empty theatre, as the end credits rolled by feverishly scanning them to see if I could find my name there, but alas no.
There is even a book, Chess in the Movies by Bob Basalla (Thinkers Press/ Wonderworks, Davenport, Iowa, 2005) which catalogues in loving detail any and all occurrences of a chess scene in film and television series, and classifies them according to their level of importance in the context of the film (Chess Encounters of the First, Second and Third Kinds). Here you will find over 2,000 film and television entries with a description of the nature and extent of the chess scene to be found there, plus any obvious mistakes in the set up of the board or the legality of the moves and such like. This book is a labour of love by the author and definitely merits the attentions of anyone seriously interested in chess and its cinematic representations.
I myself started a thread on the ECF Chess Forum (www.ecforum.org.uk) on the same topic a couple of years ago and it produced some lively postings. This was prompted by my watching an episode of the (normally excellent) Monk on one of the cable channels a short while beforehand. This episode concerned a professional chess player who planned to murder his wife, and indeed boasts to her that he is going to do so. (I should perhaps put a SPOILER ALERT here for the benefit of Monk fans but the plot is irrelevant to the point I am making.) The distraught wife approaches Monk to get him to protect her, but she is murdered nonetheless. Monk investigates the case and naturally proves the chess player guilty (though the denouement is very weak). My grouse was that the player – “…who is characterised as a grandmaster of world championship calibre (though whether he actually is the world champion is a point about which the film is somewhat ambiguous) - is portrayed as highly educated, cultivated, well-dressed, debonair, well into middle age, living a life of rather ostentatious luxury, and in the habit of sprinkling witty aphorisms and classical quotations into his conversation. In other words about as far removed from a typical grandmaster, or indeed chess player of any status, that you could possibly imagine. The film moreover indulges in a lot of cheesy use of chess metaphor (which Monk himself deprecates in the film), and there is some familiar cod psychology about dominating the opponent etc, etc, derived from the fictional grandmaster’s books” - (maybe that bit isn't quite so far-fetched).
This is, I fear, standard mode for the portrayal of top-ranking chess players in film and television. I vaguely recall a thriller from a few years back in which the hero is a grandmaster playing in a tournament whilst trying to solve a murder case. Both he and his second (a blind man!) are hopelessly unconvincing, and the film was generally pretty dire as I recall. There have been other stabs at the "chess player as hero", though more often it is the "chess player as villain" in which his labyrinthine cunning is put to diabolical use (shades of Sherlock Holmes once more). The classic illustration is that of Kronsteen in From Russia with Love, the second Bond film, with the Tal-like GM (portrayed by Vladek Sheybal) found in an early scene despatching his opponent with a brilliant combination, based, as many people know, on the real game Spassky-Bronstein from the Soviet Championships of 1960.
Almost invariably the characterisation of the player in such offerings is hopelessly wide of the mark, and the realisation of chess playing scenes none too authentic either, with egregious errors such as the board being wrongly set (such things were chronicled by the late Mike Fox and Richard James in “another magazine” at one time under the heading of LASTBUR, though I cannot recall what the acronym stood for). More subtly such productions generally fail to capture the true ambience of competitive chess. I am not talking here about films about chess itself such as The Luzhin Defence (Marleen Gorris, 2000) based on Nabokov's novel, though here too the chess scenes failed to convince despite having no less a chess adviser than Jon Speelman, but rather those in which the hero or villain, or other character happens to be a chess player. Perhaps we should form a Campaign for the Realistic and Accurate Portrayal of Players, though the acronym may be unfortunate.
There are some good portrayals in amongst all the dross. The Grass Arena (Gillies MacKinnon, 1991), a BBC adaptation of the book of the same name by John Healy is a moderately realistic depiction of certain aspects of the English chess scene, though even here there are some infelicities. As Basalla notes, Ken Whyld in his 1992 “Quotes and Queries” column in this magazine gives high marks to the listed chess adviser, Shaughan Feakes, particularly for creating plausible chess positions, though nonetheless the club depicted was “too luxurious”.
Are other games and sports similarly ill-served in televisual and cinematic terms? Almost certainly yes. One could cite numerous examples but to select a few at random I doubt if The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 1961) is a very convincing pool player, and I am quite certain that the protagonists in Wimbledon (Richard Loncraine, 2004) are nothing like professional tennis players, or for that matter that the Rocky films are an authentic depiction of professional heavyweight boxing. The Hustler incidentally was based on a novel by Walter Tevis who also wrote The Queen’s Gambit, a chess-themed thriller, but chess in literary fiction is another subject!
Neville Twitchell ([email protected])
17th February 2012
(appeared originally in the BCM)
Like most of us, I imagine, I have often been intrigued and irritated (but usually irritated) by the presentation of chess players in film and television drama. Their portrayal and that of the chess scene in general is usually, one need scarcely say, hopelessly adrift of reality. Chess playing characters often fall into one of several stereotypes: the teenage nerd/computer geek; the dastardly villain; the old men in the park; and of course the hyper-driven and possibly deranged grandmaster/world champion. Moreover, chess is often used by writers and directors as a visual metaphor for devious plot-making, or is designed to confer a spurious patina of intellectualism on the characters in the belief (right or wrong) that chess is to be equated with a high level of intelligence. We are all familiar with the typical scene of the characters plotting some nefarious conspiracy whilst casually playing a game, or at any rate seated at a chessboard twiddling the pieces, with a lot of heavy-handed chessic metaphor thrown in for good measure.
For this we have Sherlock Holmes (or rather Conan Doyle) to thank, at least in part. In The Retired Colourman, the last of the Holmes stories (according to some sources) Holmes comments that: “Amberley excelled at chess – one mark, Watson, of a scheming mind.” In fact Holmes himself is often depicted on screen as a chess player, distractedly pondering a board whilst deliberating on a case, though I don’t think that anywhere does Conan Doyle actually write a scene involving Holmes at the chessboard. I believe that in the recent Sherlock Holmes film, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (Guy Ritchie, 2011) he plays chess against Moriarty and that chess is a leitmotif in the film (unfortunately I avoided seeing the film on its release, fearing that the “Hollywoodisation” of Holmes would be more than I could bear). Researching this on the Internet movie database (http://uk.imdb.com) I discovered that there is a chess adviser credited, under “Other crew”, and that it is none other than our own Adam Raoof!
This called to mind my own solitary (and very unlikely) claim to fame in that I once acted as technical adviser on the Film X-Men 3. For this I had to set up plausible chess positions on some boards which were the backdrop to the final (post-credit) sequence of the movie. Here, once again it was clear that chess was being used as a device or prop to convey the machinations of a devilish mind, with the villain seated at a chessboard in the park. I spent about eight hours at a freezing outdoor lot at Pinewood Studios whilst the director went through thirty takes of this very short scene before he was completely satisfied, and then went to see the film on release and stood staring at the screen, in a by now empty theatre, as the end credits rolled by feverishly scanning them to see if I could find my name there, but alas no.
There is even a book, Chess in the Movies by Bob Basalla (Thinkers Press/ Wonderworks, Davenport, Iowa, 2005) which catalogues in loving detail any and all occurrences of a chess scene in film and television series, and classifies them according to their level of importance in the context of the film (Chess Encounters of the First, Second and Third Kinds). Here you will find over 2,000 film and television entries with a description of the nature and extent of the chess scene to be found there, plus any obvious mistakes in the set up of the board or the legality of the moves and such like. This book is a labour of love by the author and definitely merits the attentions of anyone seriously interested in chess and its cinematic representations.
I myself started a thread on the ECF Chess Forum (www.ecforum.org.uk) on the same topic a couple of years ago and it produced some lively postings. This was prompted by my watching an episode of the (normally excellent) Monk on one of the cable channels a short while beforehand. This episode concerned a professional chess player who planned to murder his wife, and indeed boasts to her that he is going to do so. (I should perhaps put a SPOILER ALERT here for the benefit of Monk fans but the plot is irrelevant to the point I am making.) The distraught wife approaches Monk to get him to protect her, but she is murdered nonetheless. Monk investigates the case and naturally proves the chess player guilty (though the denouement is very weak). My grouse was that the player – “…who is characterised as a grandmaster of world championship calibre (though whether he actually is the world champion is a point about which the film is somewhat ambiguous) - is portrayed as highly educated, cultivated, well-dressed, debonair, well into middle age, living a life of rather ostentatious luxury, and in the habit of sprinkling witty aphorisms and classical quotations into his conversation. In other words about as far removed from a typical grandmaster, or indeed chess player of any status, that you could possibly imagine. The film moreover indulges in a lot of cheesy use of chess metaphor (which Monk himself deprecates in the film), and there is some familiar cod psychology about dominating the opponent etc, etc, derived from the fictional grandmaster’s books” - (maybe that bit isn't quite so far-fetched).
This is, I fear, standard mode for the portrayal of top-ranking chess players in film and television. I vaguely recall a thriller from a few years back in which the hero is a grandmaster playing in a tournament whilst trying to solve a murder case. Both he and his second (a blind man!) are hopelessly unconvincing, and the film was generally pretty dire as I recall. There have been other stabs at the "chess player as hero", though more often it is the "chess player as villain" in which his labyrinthine cunning is put to diabolical use (shades of Sherlock Holmes once more). The classic illustration is that of Kronsteen in From Russia with Love, the second Bond film, with the Tal-like GM (portrayed by Vladek Sheybal) found in an early scene despatching his opponent with a brilliant combination, based, as many people know, on the real game Spassky-Bronstein from the Soviet Championships of 1960.
Almost invariably the characterisation of the player in such offerings is hopelessly wide of the mark, and the realisation of chess playing scenes none too authentic either, with egregious errors such as the board being wrongly set (such things were chronicled by the late Mike Fox and Richard James in “another magazine” at one time under the heading of LASTBUR, though I cannot recall what the acronym stood for). More subtly such productions generally fail to capture the true ambience of competitive chess. I am not talking here about films about chess itself such as The Luzhin Defence (Marleen Gorris, 2000) based on Nabokov's novel, though here too the chess scenes failed to convince despite having no less a chess adviser than Jon Speelman, but rather those in which the hero or villain, or other character happens to be a chess player. Perhaps we should form a Campaign for the Realistic and Accurate Portrayal of Players, though the acronym may be unfortunate.
There are some good portrayals in amongst all the dross. The Grass Arena (Gillies MacKinnon, 1991), a BBC adaptation of the book of the same name by John Healy is a moderately realistic depiction of certain aspects of the English chess scene, though even here there are some infelicities. As Basalla notes, Ken Whyld in his 1992 “Quotes and Queries” column in this magazine gives high marks to the listed chess adviser, Shaughan Feakes, particularly for creating plausible chess positions, though nonetheless the club depicted was “too luxurious”.
Are other games and sports similarly ill-served in televisual and cinematic terms? Almost certainly yes. One could cite numerous examples but to select a few at random I doubt if The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 1961) is a very convincing pool player, and I am quite certain that the protagonists in Wimbledon (Richard Loncraine, 2004) are nothing like professional tennis players, or for that matter that the Rocky films are an authentic depiction of professional heavyweight boxing. The Hustler incidentally was based on a novel by Walter Tevis who also wrote The Queen’s Gambit, a chess-themed thriller, but chess in literary fiction is another subject!
Neville Twitchell ([email protected])
17th February 2012
(appeared originally in the BCM)