Regular readers would know I have an abiding interest in the teaching/coaching of juniors and how best to do this. To this end, I have read a lot of books, and books from other areas. In the last 12 months of so, I have been "stirred" in my meditations on juniors chess and how juniors learn chess and improve in chess by two emerging (and possibly dominant) strands in the achieving excellence and competition psychology genre. Books such as
Outliers by
Malcolm Gladwell and the very recent book,
Bounce! by
Matthew Syed, and the research they are based on (Malcolm and Matthew's books are popularisations of voluminous research in this area), and books on thinking and the brain, how we make decisions, such as
Jonah Lehrer's How We Decide, and the emerging importance of the frontal cortex of the brain, and
behavioural economics (this is a crossover from my research in law and economics).
I recently came across this post-Olympic post-mortem conducted on the Team US (Open) by its team captain,
IM John Donaldson, of the famed
San Francisco Mechanics Institute Chess Club. The article is
here and here are the interesting bits as related to topics in my first para:
Still, I must mention that there are dark clouds on the horizon. Everything short of organizing a pre-Olympiad training camp was done to ensure the team would be able to perform at its best but and yet the future is troubling for several reasons. Why? One need only look around the top 20 tables at the Olympiad to realize almost no players were over 50 and few over 40. Four years from now Gata, Alex and Yury will all be around 40 years old. Playing well at that age was no problem in the past and indeed several standard-bearers of our Olympiad teams have played well to almost 50, but times our changing. Yes, there are exceptions like Ivanchuk, Gelfand and Anand who continue to defy the clock but look for a player over 44 in the FIDE top 50 list and you will find exactly one - Nigel Short number 48 at age 45.
This is not a problem for traditional powers like Russia and Ukraine which continue to churn out a steady stream of never-ending talent nor is it an obstacle to rapidly improving countries like China, Azerbaijan and France, but it is for the United States. Go to the latest FIDE rating list and you will find two Russian players over 2700 under 21 and another half dozen over 2600. Yes Russia is quite a measuring stick but look at France with three players over 2600 FIDE or Vietnam and Norway with two apiece. The US has no one. Granted Robert Hess at age 18 and 2596 is not far away and Ray Robson could easily be there soon but after that the US has few comparable prospects. Yes we have many fine young players but we set the bar lower. A player in the US who is 18 and 2500 is considered outstanding but in Russia or the Ukraine they would have been expected to reach that level of strength three or four years earlier.
There have been many improvements in American chess the past decade. One can point to increased access to quality coaching, the introduction of a US chess league and more domestic tournaments offering international title norms as substantial progress but there is still much to be done. Outside of the US championship there is nothing for our elite players (Nakamura, Kamsky and Onischuk) to play in the United States that will improve their quality of play and provide them with a steady income. For these players the only answer is to be constantly traveling to Europe or in the case of Italian-American Fabiano Caruana to permanently base one's self there.
Yes, it is possible to earn a very decent living coaching, lecturing and writing. All are honorable activities but the fact is that if you want to reach your peak as a player these activities only detract. The precarious situation of top players in the US is not lost on promising American players and a long list can be made of those who never stuck around long enough to realize their potential preferring a traditional career.
It's quite understandable that in the United States where time is precious and the European model of two months of paid vacation each summer is but a dream (likely for them as well in the not too distant future) that the weekend Swiss remains supreme. How else can you pack in a bunch of games but to play two a day over ten to twelve hours? This holds true for all players from amateurs to Grandmasters and there is no question that it provides lots of experience and builds endurance. Unfortunately these qualities do not necessarily translate well to the international arena. The World Championship cycle and the Olympiads, the premier events in chess, are played at the rate of one game a day with extensive pre-game preparation. Your typical weekend Swiss whether it be a local or national usually requires rationing one's energy and accepting that with the pairings going up five minutes before the round there will be no time to prepare. The all or nothing mentality required in a system in which a score of 5 from 5 yields a nice prize and 4.5 next to nothing creates a playing style that requires substantial readjustment when confronted with a schedule of one game a day against players of comparable strength round after round.
Identifying the problems of American chess in developing and maintaining top players is easy enough - the inability of top players to earn a living in the United States and failure of top juniors to develop as quickly as possible for lack of proper events - but offering solutions is more complicated. One could point to success stories in China, India, Azerbaijan, Vietnam, Russia and Ukraine but all would be difficult to replicate in the United States where there is no history of government support and the cost of living is high enough that playing chess will likely never be a viable career compared to more conventional professions.
IM Donaldson then nominates France as a country whose experience can provide some valuable lessons for chess development:
For much of the 20th century France was one of the weakest chess-playing countries in Western Europe. The contrast between it and nearby neighbors Germany and England could not be more evident - while Germany had strong GMs and fielded strong Olympiad teams throughout its history and England exploded into a world chess superpower in the 1970s and early 1980s - the French only produced their first native born GM (Olivier Renet) in the mid-1980s. Fast forward to 2010 where France is rated number three by country rank by average rating of its top ten players (2653), has previously mentioned three players under 21 over 2635 FIDE. France finished in the top ten in this Olympiad despite the notable absence of its usual first board Etienne Bacrot.
There are plenty of differences between France and the United States, particularly a more favorable chess geography for the former where getting to good tournaments typically involves little or no travelling. Top French players can all but ensure that basic living costs (rent, food, etc.) will be covered by playing in their national league and the Bundesliga in nearby Germany. More "safe" income is available by playing top level opposition in other leagues in Spain and Russia as well as the highly popular European Club Team championship.
Cultural differences in regard to vacation time permit French Swisses to be played at a rate of one game a day stretching out over a week. This tempo of play allows for pre-game preparation and lengthy post-mortems that hectic two-game a day weekend Swisses rarely allow. Rival regions throughout France with a strong sense of local community; compete with each other to produce better events.
IM Donaldson then goes on to compare the junior chess situation in both countries:
each has a thriving junior chess community. Both have giant national scholastic championship though they differ in their format with the US model held on a long weekend and the French a week-long-affair over spring break. Interestingly cities throughout France compete for the right to hold these championships and local merchants join together to help sponsor them perceiving good business opportunities to be had by a sudden influx of a couple thousand children and parents to their area.
One interesting French innovation is the junior leagues that are arranged by region. Teams are made up of two players under 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18. They play two matches over a weekend and are accompanied by both chaperones and coaches who prepare the kids before the games and analyze with them afterward. This sort of systematic training pays dividends when French kids play in the World Youth championships which have exactly the same sort of schedule. While countries like the US and England will occasionally enjoy an individual success in these events (for example Alex Lenderman, Daniel Naroditsky and Sam Shankland for the United States) the only Western country that really competes with nations from the former Soviet Union, China, India and Vietnam is France.
Replicating the French league system, whereby teams meet three times a year over long weekends, would likely be impossible due to the considerable travel costs but the Spanish and Russian models might be viable. They meet over nine consecutive days in one location in a touristic destination - maybe Seattle or Portland in the summer where the temperature is not over 100 degrees?
Lastly, IM Donaldson, makes a concrete suggestion:
One type of event that has become increasingly rare throughout the world that might address the needs of top players to keep improving, that would provide them with a steady income that didn't require constant overseas trips and which would allow top juniors to develop properly is the round robin. The explosion of top caliber players the past two decades and a drop in the number of round robin events held has made it an organizers market with players under 2725 pretty much stuck with league play and Swisses. The US could take advantage of this situation and help its players with a Grand Prix series of tournaments for elite players and promising juniors. A series of a half dozen ten player round robins, comprised of top US players, specially invited foreigners and top juniors could be realistically be organized at a cost of $50,000 per event. These events would not attract the Anands and Carlsens but might aim for an average rating of around 2650 FIDE. The cost would not be excessive if borne by a series of cities throughout the country. Tournaments could be situated on the calendar so that foreign players could combine them with major US events if they so desired.
Organizing such a series of events might not be easy but the alternate is a steady decline of American chess in relation to the rest of the world.
I think Australia chess can learn from this as well. Yes, (before someone flames me for the bleeding obvious!!!) Australia has a very much smaller population than the US or France. But questions which arise:
1) We had a very "young" team at the Olympiad, GMs Zong Yuan, Smerdon, GM-elect George, and two veterans, GM Johansen and IM Solomon. But wehere is the next generation? We have not "blooded" those as yet, have we?
2) We have "blooded" those in the women team much quicker and earlier with Emma Guo and Vaness Reid and that may be due to the nature of women chess in Australia.
3) R-R events for promising juniors and ex-juniors in addition to the Grand Prix swisses?
4) Send juniors to overseas events to blood them? Note GM Smerdon's recent
blog on this very issue.
But at the end of the day, the first and foremost requirement is Sponsorship and money!!! (To my surprise (and possibly should not have been so!) no one has contacted me relating to my previous
blog on sponsorship and my "cry" for help.) How to get it is the $64 million question ......
