AI has Not Changed Chess
“AI has Not Changed Chess. It Is Exactly As It Has Been For Centuries. What Has Changed Is The Accessibility Of Information.”
Legendary Elizabeth Shaughnessy — one of the key figures in the development of scholastic chess in California and the founder of the Berkeley Chess School — reflects on how a local initiative evolved into a sustainable educational and social movement. In this interview, she discusses the role of chess in shaping thinking and community, the gender barriers women have faced in the chess world, the differences between educational models, and why, in the digital age, a physical chess space remains irreplaceable.
Interview with Elizabeth Shaughnessy
By Dmitri Dzhanhirov
QUESTIONS
- Role and Era
Looking back, at what point did you personally realize that you were not just involved in chess, but building something much larger — a social and educational phenomenon?
To me, chess is inherently a social phenomenon, the challenge has been to promote chess and make the game available to children and adults who might believe the stereotype that chess was the unique preserve of polymaths and geniuses who were mostly men. Most of my female friends, whom I persuaded to join the chess club in college, met their spouses there, and I personally made lifelong friends through chess.
Sociability is an essential part of chess, which is why, despite the popularity of online chess, over-the-board chess will continue to be played and should be encouraged especially for children. It can also be a life saver for the elderly.
At Berkeley Chess School, civility and consideration of others are as important as who won. Boasting and one upmanship are frowned upon. Shake hands before the game, thank your opponent after the game. Control your disappointment if you lost - realizing that your turn to win will come another time. Celebrate your win, realizing that your turn to lose will come another time.
Educationally, I served on the executive board of the Berkeley Unified School District for 8 years, 1986 – 1994, including the Presidency, dealing, on a daily basis, with educational needs of children, K-12.
My belief that chess was a great educational tool was supported by the enthusiastic feedback from teachers and principals when BCS began our outreach program in 1998. The outreach program taught chess to an entire grade, there was no opt out. The kids at all learning levels loved to play and quickly grasped tactics and strategy. Teachers reported immediate benefits in the classroom and on the playground. But to be sure, we commissioned an in-house study of our outreach program at J.O. Ford Elementary, a Title 1 School in Richmond in 2006-2007 and found measurable and meaningful improvements in Math and English test scores for students who had taken chess. In 2012, we engaged a consultancy, the Kensington Research Group, to do a randomized study of our chess education program at Learning Without Limits, a Title 1 public school in Oakland. The findings were what we expected – students taking chess one hour per week during the school day scored 13.41% better on standardized tests than their counterparts who did not take chess. A brief study of these same students conducted by the Education department at UC Berkeley in 2013 linked chess skill acquisition to a dramatic increase in students’ fluid reasoning and ability to manage stressful situations, leading to better decision making.
I was convinced. The goal became to make chess as widely available as possible, through fee programs, and free programs to children in need.
- Woman and Leader
When you started out, women in chess and in the leadership of chess organizations were a rarity. What invisible barriers did you have to face — and which of them, in your opinion, still exist today?
I have faced all barriers and injuries, both visible and invisible, that are legal in the US and some that are illegal - like most other women. And they all exist today.
Some barriers are minor; but still matter. For example, in the old days at a well-known local chess club, the women’s restroom was on another floor and down a long corridor from the tournament room. And you had to find the tournament director to get the key, all while your clock was still running. I refused to journey into the labyrinth. I asked the tournament director to stand guard at the nearby men’s room to negate that advantage. They built a women’s restroom on the same floor as the playing room years later, when they were threatened with a suit for hiring discrimination.
The most profound barriers come from peoples’ engrained attitudes about gender. I have held leadership positions in both chess and government organizations, and the headwinds from men, but sometimes women, too, were predictable and constant: Women are not as good as men at math, finances, spatial reasoning, or chess. Tell that to the Polgars or super GM Ju Wenjun. That’s what people tried to tell me as a young girl, but I was lucky enough to have parents who supported me.
My convent high school didn’t offer advanced math because “we all know that girls are no good at math.” Well, my father did not know! What he did know is that his daughter liked and was good at math. He convinced the nuns to offer advanced math. They listened because he was a man, of course. I was joined by nine other girls in our class of thirty, and all ten of us excelled at math in the final exams.
My parents showed me how important it is to fight for equality for myself and for all women. Progress has been made but when we still have people like GM Ramirez and GM Smirin harassing and denigrating women, not enough!
- California as a Unique Environment
Why do you think California, in particular, has become such a unique space for the development of chess — from school programs to new forms of popularization?
When I arrived in California in 1971, there was no scholastic chess programs aside from Ray Orwig’s at St Mark’s School in Marin. There were chess clubs for adults in several cities, but the participation was fizzling after the Bobby Fischer boom.
In 1982, the principal of my children’s school, Oxford Elementary in Berkeley, asked for parent volunteers to teach after-school classes so that late buses could be provided. I volunteered to teach chess.
When I walked into the school library that first day, there were 72 children, plus their parents. This provided ample proof that children were, in fact, very interested in learning chess.
Soon, I was volunteering 5 days a week at schools in Berkeley, and more schools kept requesting chess classes. Thus began the Berkeley Chess School.
This is how a chance need for an after-school program in a Berkeley, California, elementary school, started a west coast chess renaissance.
When I taught that first class at Oxford, the Bobby Fischer upswing in chess play was fizzling, nationwide. In the Bay Area, nothing was happening in chess for kids, short of a few dads teaching at their sons’ high schools (typically ending when their kids graduated) and a few dedicated teachers such as Ray Orwig, the PE teacher at St Mark’s school in Marin County. The one GM in California, Walter Browne, made his living at the Oaks Casino in Emeryville where he was the house man for poker.
But, when I entered the school library to teach chess that day as a volunteer and saw the great interest among the Bay Area’s diverse community of parents for their children to learn chess, it was a catalytic moment - a fortuitous confluence. On the one hand, a large community ready to support chess instruction for their children, and on the other, a former Irish Women’s Chess Champion and a Chess Olympiad player, a well-travelled and successful businesswoman, and perhaps most importantly, a mom, ready to answer that call.
I recruited chess players from the Berkeley Chess Club and charged the parents a fee to pay them. The would-be savants in the chess world scoffed at the idea, believing that parents would not pay for chess. But I was a parent of three children paying for enrichments of all kinds, so why not chess? My friend, the late George Koltanowski, Dean of American Chess and world blindfold champion urged me to go full steam ahead.
Word got out and the demand for classes spread like wildfire, far beyond the city of Berkeley. The Berkeley Chess School taught classes as far south as Livermore, and as far north as Davis.
I wrote lesson plans based on Rueben Fine’s “Chess the Easy Way” and offered them to anyone who wanted to use them. I helped many other entrepreneurs to start their own classes – it helped that my husband was an attorney.
Our students became adults and some started their own programs. IM David Pruess and NM David Petty (both BCS alumni) were both early content managers and key figures in the creation and growth of Chess for Kids for Chess.Com. Pruess single-handedly started a Chess House for GMs in the Bay Area where GM Sam Shankland and GM Jesse Krai, among others, lived and thrived. GM Walter Browne was no longer alone.
Now there are hundreds of chess players on the West Coast starting, or who have started, their own club for kids - all using our original fee model that works for both the teacher and the student. It seems like it has been around forever.
New York and the East Coast have a long tradition of chess in the schools which works well, but it is different. The schools hire a chess teacher - a full-time and well-paid job. But the goal is to create a team or teams to win the National Championships bringing prestige to the school.
That is fundamentally different from what we are trying to achieve at BCS. Winning a national tournament is a worthwhile goal for any chess player, but it is fleeting. At BCS, we help children develop cognitive, academic, and social skills through chess. Chess nurtures critical thinking and spatial reasoning skills, the greatest predictors of success in STEAM subjects. Children who learn chess come to believe in themselves and see themselves as smart and can apply the creativity and discipline they develop through chess towards any life goal, and sometimes, that goal is chess!
The Berkeley Chess School, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, is now in its 46th year, and has five alumni GMs - Jon Ludwig Hammer, Sam Shankland, Hans Neiman, Christopher Yu and GM Elect, Josiah Stearman, possibly more than any other school. We believe we produce GMs because we do not try to make GMs.
A lot has changed since 1982. For many years, BCS Headquarters was a stack of banker’s boxes in my living room. Thanks to the support and generosity of the chess community, we now own a building, the Berkeley Chess Center! The front entrance is amazing. A 256 square foot, chess board window literally invites passersby to step into the game. The Center has a spacious tournament hall, multiple classrooms, a playground, a café and a library. And there are plans for expansion. Chess in the Bay Area is here to stay.
Covid was, of course, the watershed moment for the online explosion in chess.
- Comparing Eras
Today, in the public imagination, chess is closely associated with popular YouTubers, streamers, and online learning. How, in your view, does the “chess mission” of the 21st century fundamentally differ from the one you began with?
It’s all good! The more people become involved in the game of chess, the more they will think deeply and critically and should make life better for everyone.
The mission is the same: bring chess to as many people as possible, especially children. YouTube, Twitch, blogs, websites, online learning, and chess engines are great for engagement, spreading the word, and giving people more tools to analyze and improve their games, but chess at the most competitive level, is still in-person and over the board, and for scholastic players, it’s the most fun. That’s why we’ve invested so much in the Berkeley Chess Center. After the isolation of Covid, we have a place where people can meet and play in perpetuity.
- Chess and Society
For you, chess seems to have been a tool for both education and social integration. What social challenges do chess address today — and which ones do you think are still underestimated?
The Covid epidemic demonstrated to us how essential human interactions are to the happiness and stability of the human psyche.
When adults play chess in a club, even the most reticent of players open up when they analyze their games or help analyze the games of others. We have students on the autism spectrum who have found a home at BCS because chess offers the community, structure and creativity they need to thrive. People connect and play chess online, but research has shown that the online environment can be isolating, and even toxic, especially for young people. That is why it’s so important to have a place to go. Our Chess Center is such a place. Even chess players who have not played that evening come and socialize. Everyone is happy to have somewhere to relate to other humans on the subject they all love.
When children learn chess in a group of their peers, they are learning not just the game and its wonders and discipline, they are learning how to relate to their fellow human beings in situations of success and failure. They are learning that it is fun to share.
Here I will attest to a gender difference: the role of women in facilitating socialization in the classroom and the tournament hall is hugely underestimated. That’s another reason we need to recruit more women to chess!
- Chess and AI
Artificial intelligence has radically changed the game: analysis, preparation, and training. Where, in your opinion, is the line between a useful tool and the loss of the human element in chess?
AI has not changed chess. It is exactly as it has been for centuries. What has changed is the accessibility of information. I think that is more than just a useful tool. I think it is a sea change. And I think it is good for chess and good for humanity.
What I see happening however, as chess becomes more popular is that the modern impatience to get quick answers inclines players toward bullet, blitz and/or rapid. I have nothing against casual chess and having fun. It continues to entertain me although my ability to think as deeply as I once could is gone thanks in large part to Covid.
But when I extol the educational and mental values of chess to the kids, parents, educators and funders, I am talking about the game that takes time and effort. I am talking about the game where you are forcing your mind to find the best move you can, not just the move that on a quick glance looks good. I’m talking about expanding the grey matter. That is what should be encouraged and taken seriously. Everyone should aspire to develop their mind, and the minds of their children, to its maximum potential.
- What AI Cannot Replace
Which aspects of chess — pedagogical, psychological, and human — do you believe will never truly be affected or replaced by programs and AI?
The joy of finding a great combination in a game you are playing. Showing it to a fellow chess player. If AI finds it, well then you have not. That satisfaction is denied you and you will have learned nothing.
If you let AI do the work so you don’t have to, your brain will atrophy and you deny yourself the joy and benefits of chess. Chess becomes meaningless. Use it or lose it.
- Personal Teaching Experience
If you were starting the Berkeley Chess School from scratch today, in the 2020s, what would you do fundamentally differently — and what would you keep unchanged?
If I was starting the Berkeley Chess in today’s hyper-digital environment, the dream of owning our own building would become priority #1. Other than that, not much.
The Berkeley Chess Center, is an anecdote to the isolation players can feel online. The Center has multiple classrooms and a bright airy tournament hall, plus skittles rooms, a café and a playground. Add to that, there are no time restrictions as to when games must end to allow the cleaning crew or the TD to close the building. 2622 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley, is where the action is!
We even have plans for a small gym. After, and during, an intense tournament, adults need recess just as much as the kids!
Chess Centers are the future of chess!
- Looking Ahead
Do you have your own vision or scenario for the future development of chess in the United States and worldwide, and what role do you think chess will play in society?
See Answer # 8.
I would like to see chess as mainstream as soccer, with a club, and a “club house” in every city and town. Everyone needs a place to play. I am hoping the success of the Berkeley Chess Center will encourage other community minded individuals and entrepreneurs to follow suit. This happened when I started the BCS. There were well-meaning nay-sayers who said parents would never pay for anything as “elite” and “niche” as chess the way they paid for other after-school activities, and now scholastic chess is mainstream. My vision is that everyone will have a place to belong and play as nice as the Berkeley Chess Center.
- Memories and Stories
Which encounters, games, or moments in your chess life have stayed with you the most — not necessarily the most famous ones, but the most human?
The Chess Olympiad in Chess City in Elista, Kalmykia (former Soviet Union), 1998
It was my first time returning to international play after a hiatus of many years raising kids and establishing BCS. And although it was exhilarating to return to serious chess play, the Irish women’s team was not likely nor expected to come home with a medal. Days were spent preparing in the mornings, playing and analyzing in the afternoons, and enjoying the people and the culture in the evenings and on the off days. No meals to prepare, no dishes to wash, no egos to nurture. Just me time. I felt liberated.
Elista is an extraordinary place on the Steppes of Russia: a Buddhist Mongolian country in Europe, a people descended from Genghis Khan, with a fascinating culture. Horses, Yurts (national round houses made of felt), wastelands with hidden surprises, just like the desert. Looks like nothing grows until you look. Beautiful friendly people. We enjoyed the culture, and the people were only too willing to entertain us. Although Chess City was being constructed as we played, the opening ceremony was, by a long shot, the best of my seven Olympiads. The country was behind the “iron curtain,” but the President was quick to assure us that we were safe, and to enjoy Kalmykia’s new freedom. There were soldiers everywhere we went.
I was happy to return home, but the memories linger.
- A personal Message
What would you like to say to young chess enthusiasts, coaches, and organizers who are now trying to find their path between classical traditions and 21st-century technology?
Decide what it is you want to promote and why. Classical is not for everyone, nor is bullet, blitz nor rapid. The approach is different if you want your child, or the students you are teaching, to win championships, or if you want to foster the love of chess for its own sake, or you believe in its power to help kids develop life skills, or if you just want to have fun. It is all good. Chess satisfies all needs. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to win a trophy. There’s nothing wrong with bughouse.
But if you’re in it for the money I suggest you rethink your choice. There are much easier and more certain ways of making money.
Elizabeth Shaughnessy kindly provided one of her memorable games, played at the 35th Women’s Chess Olympiad, where she represented the Irish national team.
