MARK RUBERY CHESS
The former Russian GM, Alexander Baburin, now a resident in Ireland has chosen to make a career of teaching the game rather than pursue the uncertain rewards of tournament play. During a teaching assignment in San Francisco he fielded the following questions: Q: How is it beneficial for kids to learn chess, outside of the professional arena?
AB: Well, concentration really. It teaches you to focus, but it teaches you in an indirect way. Instead of telling the child to learn to focus, you give him a sophisticated game where he can hone his skills. I would say that the second benefit is interaction with other children. It gives kids who aren’t sporty -- say, not into basketball or soccer -- a chance to interact on a competitive level. And third, it teaches you to deal with defeat, with both major and minor setbacks. I remember when I was fifteen years old, and I lost a game. I came home and told my parents that I didn’t want to talk to anyone for a while. I just needed to deal with losing that game, and then move on. But I had that encouraging coach, you know? It creates models for dealing with pressure and setbacks, and I think that’s very good. I think that ultimately, the idea isn’t that the kids will all become grandmasters, but that they will learn the game and can come back to it later in life. Q: What do the kids you teach seem to like about the game?
AB: Well there’s the aesthetic beauty, some kids are definitely drawn to that. Some appreciate it the way you would savour music or art. But really, it attracts all types. Sporty or competitive types as well introverted types. It’s very good for self-confidence Q: Do you focus on the cultural background of chess at all in the classroom?
AB: I teach advanced classes, so we’re going over a lot of technicalities and strategy. But chess has a very long history --in recorded history, it’s been around for at least a few hundred years. I’ll talk about figures such as André Philidor, who was a prolific chess writer and probably the best chess player of his era. But he was also France’s leading composer for a time, and wrote operas. Or I tell them about Alexander Kotov, the Soviet champion who wrote ‘Think Like a Grandmaster’ and ‘Play Like a Grandmaster’. He was also a munitions engineer in the Cold War. I also go over the styles of the top players in the world. I really believe that chess is not just a hobby, but a sport with a past. WHITE TO PLAY AND DRAW SEE DIAGRAM have combined academic disciplines like Neuroscience and Computer Science with chess. That has led to articles on chess neuroscience or how chess can be taught in the most efficient way. When training chess we train our long-term memory. It makes sense to analyse how longterm memory works and figure out how chess information is best presented to increase our ability to remember and to integrate knowledge into our memory. (GM Steingrimsson)