The Everything Chess Basics Book (53 page)

For any scheduled chess game, it is important to show up on time. Failure to do so is not only rude; it also could damage your chances in the game. In a timed encounter, your clock is set ticking when the game is scheduled. If you fail to show up in the next hour, you forfeit the game.

Tournaments

Formal tournaments come in various types, and most people are familiar with at least several of those types. Tournaments are held in many sports and games, including scrabble, bridge, and tennis.

The types of tournaments used for chess tournaments include:

1. Round-robin

2. Double round-robin

3. Knockout

4. Swiss system

The round-robin is a very basic device that can handle a few people in a short time or a lot of people over a long period of time. Every competitor plays every other competitor. If there are eight players, each one will play seven games.

Another version of the round-robin is the double round-robin. Each player gets a game with White and a game with Black with every other competitor. This way, nobody has any inherent advantage. The obvious disadvantage is that playing two games against each of your seven opponents means playing fourteen games. And that may take a long time.

The round-robin and especially the double round-robin has been the staple of professional chess for a long time. But such tournaments typically take a few weeks to a month to complete, especially when professionals insist on playing only one game a day.

Most people simply don’t have the time or the resources or the energy to go through such a brutal schedule. So the alternate systems are much more appropriate for the casual player or even the serious amateur.

If you are familiar with the knockout system, this probably comes from watching tennis. You play until you lose. At the end, only one player remains as the champion. This is an exciting type of tournament, but hasn’t really caught on in the chess community.

The tournament of choice for most chess players in the United States is the Swiss system, which is essentially a knockout format with nobody getting eliminated. When you lose, you simply play someone else who has lost. But it resembles a knockout for the winners.

Ranking

Ranking is important for a Swiss-system tournament. For that, chess players use their ratings. The competitors are divided into two groups for the first round. The top player in the top group plays the top player in the bottom group, the second player in the first group plays the second player in the bottom group, etc. In subsequent rounds, the players are divided up by score group. In the third round, all those with three wins are in one group, those with two and a half comprise the next score group, those with two another, etc. Each score group is divided in two, with the top player from the top group playing the top player from the bottom group.

Correspondence Chess

Playing chess through the mail is not an activity for impatient people. A game can take over a year to complete, with moves coming on a weekly basis rather than within seconds (also known as
blitz chess
) or minutes.

Correspondence in general is mostly a faded memory of what it used to be, and correspondence chess is no exception. Our modern world includes TV, radio, telephone, e-mail, faxes, and the Internet. These have all eroded our need for correspondence, but have also provided us with alternate ways to communicate. Thus there are telephone, e-mail, and Internet chess competitions as well as the more traditional face-to-face and correspondence games.

There are sanctioned correspondence tournaments where you pay a fee and can earn a prize. These events are rated, just like overthe-board (OTB) tournaments. There are arbiters, or referees, to make sure the event runs smoothly and everyone sends their moves in on time.

Of course chess notation is what makes correspondence chess possible. You simply write your move on a letter or postcard and send it off. It’s a good idea to include the last couple of moves, and even a diagram if you can. And it’s also a good idea to keep a separate board handy that has the current position on it. This is true especially if you have more than one game going.

Chess Books and Magazines

A huge number of chess books and magazines are available to the enthusiast. It has been claimed that there are more books on chess than on all other books combined. And more are being written every day. The USCF has a large collection of chess books and magazines available through the Web site
www.uschess.org
, the USCF catalog, or the sales hotline
1-800-388-KING (5464).

Subject Matter

These books cover a bewildering array of chess material. The subject matter of these works can range from spot the checkmate and find the combination themes to pamphlets and even large tomes devoted to a subvariation of one of the openings. It can include explanations of how to handle isolated pawn positions or collections of some of the great games. There are books devoted to endgame studies or historical changes in style. Somewhere along the way, every conceivable area of the game is covered.

The most popular chess books in the United States are those on the openings. Whether the multivolume reference works that cover all the main openings or the specialty books that cover the latest trends in certain variations or the how-to instructions on specific openings or variations, these opening books are in great demand.

Magazines

Besides the official national chess magazine,
Chess Life
, there are official state magazines for practically every state, correspondence chess magazines, problem magazines, even a blitz chess magazine! With resources like that, you will never run out of reading material. This doesn’t include the various club bulletins and local publications that come and go. And we haven’t even touched on the Internet yet.

Chess in Education

There is a concerted effort these days to get chess into primary and secondary schools, either as an after-school activity or as a required subject. Some school administrators and teachers have become convinced that the act of learning chess increases cognitive skills and self-esteem.

There have been several studies done, using scientific criteria, to determine what learning chess can do for students. If these studies are accurate, the unmistakable conclusion is that when students learn chess, they learn to make decisions, plan ahead, accept the consequences of their decisions, think analytically, and thus improve self-esteem.

Another reason chess in the schools is such a good idea is the great amount of transferability involved. Skills learned through chess can transfer to skills in math, geography, English, foreign languages, science, finance, art, and many other subjects.

These studies have taken place using grade school students as the subjects, and they have taken place among privileged subjects as well as at-risk subjects. The results are always the same. Whether rich or poor, whether taken from good families or socially and/or financially challenged families, students who learn chess seem to improve their thinking skills.

Other Forms of Chess

There are other games that use most of the rules of chess and the same equipment. Some of these are popular, and some have been almost forgotten. Others are being invented as you read.

Bughouse

Very popular with the younger crowd, this version of chess requires two boards, two sets, and four players. It is real team chess, with each team consisting of two players. One plays White on one board, while the other plays Black on the other board. When a piece or pawn is captured, it does not simply leave the board. It becomes the property of your teammate. When you have acquired extra pieces or pawns in this way, you can use one of them by placing it anywhere on the board (with certain restrictions) in place of making a normal move.

There are thousands of chess variants, ranging from three-dimensional chess to versions that add squares to the board and pieces to the set. Older versions also exist, such as Chinese and Japanese chess, which are closer to the original Indian or Persian game. But none of them has gathered the great popularity of the royal game that we all know.