MARK RUBERY CHESS SEE DIAGRAM

WHITE TO PLAY AND WIN The following segment of a revealing article was published in the prestigious Forbes Magazine by Alex Knapp. There looks at the issue of top players trying to make a living from the game… ‘Last month, at the United States Chess Championship, I entered a world of chess as serious business. For one thing, I was wanded by a security guard on my way up to the competition.

(To prevent cheating, cell phones or anything else that can connect to the internet were strictly forbidden in the competition area - I had to leave my smartwatch behind, too.) Before the round got started, tournament director Tony Rich had an announcement to make to the players - he wanted them to make sure all their paperwork was in order. “If you don’t have a tax form, I can’t pay you.”It was a reminder that, to paraphrase Bull Durham, that while chess may be an intellectual battlefield “full of magic, truth and the fundamental ontological riddles of our time - it’s also a job.” It’s actually an easier career than it was a few decades ago. For example, when Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan was playing in the 1970s and 1980s, there wasn’t much of a professional scene in the United States at all. “For me, the challenges of playing chess professionally was that in the United States, there weren’t chess professionals. The real professionals of the chess world were the Soviets. Being an American, it was very hard to have the training resources or the financial resources to become a professional. That was the big challenge.” Grandmaster Ben Finegold told me a similar story, “So many times I would play in the last round of a tournament and if I won I could eat. And if I lost, I had to drive home for three or four hours and figure out how to pay the rent.” One thing that all the grandmasters I talked to agreed on is that the internet is actually making it easier to have a career in chess. Not only can you get better at chess by using the internet, you can also make money teaching and making videos and doing commentary. It’s been a really great boon for chess.’ No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time with a steady eye. – Winston Churchill