Try chess in the fast lane
THERE are many virtues of learning to play chess. The most obvious, and most mentioned, is increased powers of concentration.
The ability to sit quietly and calmly, focus on the board and systematically analyse the options available, balancing potential gains against possible risks, and consistently make good choices, are the hallmarks of good players.
Then there is blitz chess. It’s a variant of chess with many forms, but the common element of a very short time control. It may be that you only have five minutes for all of your moves, or that you are required to move every 10 seconds. Even more testing is a time control of only two minutes for all moves, or just five seconds per move. Remarkably, there are many people who can still maintain a good standard of play at these speeds. Many junior players prefer these forms of the game. Their keen eyesight and fast reflexes help, but the quick result, with a fast move to the next game, is a big factor too. There’s no time to dwell on the causes of defeat, and a victory may be only five minutes away!
As a warm-up for the brilliant Chillingham Masters Congress coming up shortly, Tim Wall ran a blitz tournament last Sunday at the venue. This experiment was very successful. It demonstrated that the venue is excellent and that the playing conditions more than just meet the demanding playing requirements for such an illustrious field of invited Grandmasters and International Masters, as well as our strong local players, who hope to achieve Master Norms. James Moreby (Gosforth Chess Club) and Malola Prasath (Jesmond Chess Club) finished equal first and Malola became outright winner on a tie break. Both are excellent players of all forms of the game. It was also a great experience for a number of much less experienced players who turned up and took part. They will have learned a lot from it.
I conducted an interesting exercise with some young children on Friday night at Forest Hall Junior Chess Club. You need to know the knight move to try it. I was reinforcing the routes a knight might take to travel around the board. In this exercise, only the knight can move, so with the knight starting on b1, see if you can work out how many moves it would take to capture all of the black pawns in the above boards. The aim is to capture all of the pawns with the fewest number of moves.