Reviving Grassroots Chess Is Just As Important As ‘Saving Your Federation’
All too often, it seems to me that reviving grassroots chess is being virtually ignored by some of the higher-ups in national chess federations, who prefer to concentrate instead on ‘saving the federation’ first.
Events over the 15 months of the Covid-19 pandemic have shown this quite starkly.
Take the English Chess Federation (ECF) as an example.
Since March 2020, there have been no over-the-board chess tournaments or congresses in England, and some of the leading lights in the ECF have even discouraged other people who are not part of their inner circle from organising any.
In effect, ordinary members have been told to hunker down, pay their ECF membership subs and don’t ask awkward questions about why the ECF is doing next to nothing to revive grassroots chess.
(There is an honourable exception to this dearth of tournaments. Gibraltar – a UK overseas territory that nominally comes under the aegis of the English Chess Federaton – organised the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix from May 19-June 2. But that event was organised without any visible support – moral or otherwise – from the ECF, as far as I am aware. There were certainly no news reports on the event carried on the ECF website, for example.)
There has been online chess activity in England, of a kind.
The 4 Nations Chess League (4NCL), a company controlled by ECF Chief Executive Mike Truran, has run a series of online league seasons. To play in these online competitions, it is necessary to be an ECF Member (minimum cost for an adult: £19) or Supporter (minimum cost for an adult: £10).
The ECF Director of Home Chess, Nigel Towers, has organised ‘England’ and ‘ECF’ Online Clubs, where a couple of thousand people play blitz competitions and ‘international matches’ anonymously on websites in weekly events.
Unfortunately, there is zero social interaction in these massive anonymous online clubs, and no accompanying Zoom calls for players to chat after the games. The end result is that players could actually play anonymously on the same websites without being part of these online clubs, and not really feel any difference.
To play in the ECF Online Clubs, you do have to be a Member or Supporter – and hence, pay the ECF dues.
The ECF in 2020 did run an online British Championships, mostly prize-free, instead of a real over-the-board (or even hybrid) event. The same for 2021, except that this year you have the privilege of taking part in several days of online chess before a few lucky qualifiers get to play over-the-board for a week in early October – but that’s not exactly holiday season for adults or juniors.
Members' Support Should Not Be Taken For Granted
Now I strongly support players being Members and Supporters of the national federation and paying their dues. But grassroots players’ support should not be taken for granted, and it should be a two-way street: If members are being asked to pay their dues, the national federation should also support and encourage local initiatives by clubs and congresses – ECF affiliated organisations – not just the national events that the ECF organises directly, or that are organised privately by senior national officials.
It would have been possible to take a different approach, however, encouraging local leagues to move online and get their games rated so that – while encouraging players to renew their ECF membership – it would also have helped clubs and leagues stay together during the pandemic.
Local Online Leagues Help Keep Clubs Together
For example, last October, I started the fortnightly North East Online League, and it ran through three seasons to June, with 24 teams from 15 clubs and more than 100 players taking part in a friendly and well-supported competition.
Because matches were between local clubs and players who knew each other well, we were able to effectively tackle the problem of online cheating, and it helped to keep clubs together socially during a difficult period. As the league was online rated via the ECF’s League Management System, it gave members a good reason to renew their ECF membership.
Contrast the promotion and support for the 4NCL and ECF Online Clubs with that for local chess clubs and congresses, however.
It has been virtually non-existent.
Relying On Top-Down Organisation Doesn't Build Grassroots Chess
On more than one occasion, I have urged certain national officials to support and promote local leagues going online, as a way of keeping local chess organisations together and at the same time encouraging players to renew their ECF subs. But the opposite approach was taken, with a reliance instead on organising everything top-down nationally, with national officials calling the shots on everything, and no local initiatives encouraged at all.
Over the last year, it has of course been very difficult to safely organise over-the-board chess for whole periods of lockdown.
But not impossible. There has not been a continuous lockdown for 15 months, and a reasonable number of local clubs have taken heroic initiatives to try to get small-scale chess gatherings together.
These efforts have taken place despite little support from the national federation, a situation made worse by there being no clear definition of chess in any category of activity (sport, education or otherwise) by the UK authorities that would guide us as to how to manage social distancing, mask-wearing, etc.
Several times local organisers have been warned by senior national chess officials that it is probably not safe to organise their own events, and on at least one occasion that it would be ‘illegal.’
When I proposed to the Director of Home Chess that he and I work together to try and get over-the-board chess going again, he simply set up a committee that kicked the whole idea into the long grass and did nothing. Every constructive suggestion has been effectively sidelined or ignored.
For example, I proposed that there be a national campaign to support chess clubs playing outdoors this summer, as after mid-April it was perfectly legal for small groups of up to six people to meet up outdoors. Two chess players sitting across a chessboard in a park, for example, is perfectly fine.
Unfortunately, the response was disappointing: ‘Let’s have one day of chess outdoors this summer.’ And that hasn’t happened, either. In other words: Nothing.
The result is that local chess clubs have had to survive on their own, with little or no positive support or guidance from the national federation.
At some point this summer, lockdown restrictions are finally expected to be lifted, thanks to the largely successful vaccination programme in the UK. Social distancing may not be mandatory, and face masks may not be required.
But it is not clear what state local chess clubs and congresses will be in by the start of the new season in September, due to inactivity over the past 15 months, and a more-or-less complete lack of encouragement from key national officials.
Some problems that chess clubs will face include:
- Players may have migrated online and not be so enthusiastic to play OTB in club premises.
- Players may have got out of the habit of playing chess altogether, and simply have taken up other hobbies.
- Club venues may not be available or may have gone bust during lockdown.
- Key club organisers (often not young people themselves) have lost heart, and simply given up.
These factors are not insurmountable, and there are also new players (particularly children and young people) who have taken up chess during the pandemic.
But to take advantage of these opportunities, there need to be thriving local chess clubs all across the country.
And this is where the ‘Save the ECF, but don’t bother too much about saving grassroots English chess’ approach falls down.
Because it is exactly the local chess clubs, with their thousands of volunteer team captains, and team car drivers, and junior club coaches, that are the backbone of chess in our country. (And I am guessing, it’s the same in most countries around the world.)
Local chess clubs survive largely due to the social aspect of those clubs. That social glue that holds the chess community together is the thing that has been neglected most by certain national chess officials. In their drive to ‘Save the ECF’ they seem to have forgotten that they should have been trying to ‘Save Grassroots Chess’ as well – because one does not thrive without the other.
Believe It Or Not, I Am Optimistic
Does this mean that the situation is all doom and gloom, then? Will organised chess in England continue its decline of the last few decades?
I certainly hope not. Perhaps strangely, I am generally optimistic about the future of English chess.
This is because there are a number of good initiatives being taken, many at a grassroots level, that I believe will at some point feed through into a stronger voice for grassroots players in the Federation, and into the ECF taking more of a lead in reviving English chess.
As one small example, a number of local chess clubs have taken up the call made by myself and others to hold outdoor chess meetups this summer.
I have had reports of ‘Chess in the Park’ from towns and cities across the country, from York, Manchester, Wimbledon and others. Our club, Forest Hall in Newcastle upon Tyne, has run an outdoor club every weekend since April, and we currently have up to a dozen people, young and old, playing every Sunday afternoon at the Rising Sun Countryside Centre in Benton.
We simply sit at picnic tables, bring our sets and clocks, and enjoy some great social chess for a couple of hours. And if occasionally the weather is inclement, we adjourn to a pub nearby with covered outdoor seating.
‘ChessFest’ Shows The Way
These small local initiatives are being matched by a much bigger initiative, ChessFest on Trafalgar Square in London on July 18, which is being organised by Chess in Schools and Communities, and sponsored by XTX Markets.
ChessFest, which I’ve previewed in another blog post, will probably be the biggest-ever outdoors chess event in the UK. It will have everything you need from a chess festival: tables for casual games by the public, grandmaster simultaneous displays, Inter-City matches between teams of children from London, Liverpool and St. Petersburg, and a ‘Battle of the Prodigies’ between Shreyas Royal (London) and Tani Adewumi (New York). And of course, a live chess game inspired by Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice Through the Looking-Glass’ with 32 actors playing the part of chess pieces.
All in all, it should be a great family day out – and it sets a brilliant example for what chess organisation could be like in our country.
But it’s striking that the initiative is coming from Chess in Schools and Communities, an independent charity, rather than from the ECF itself.
Until this situation changes, and key ECF national officials are prepared to be at the forefront of developing chess at all levels, then it will be a much more difficult struggle to revive English chess than it should be.
We need to actively recruit many more new people into organised competitive chess – and that’s where local initiatives such as county and regional online leagues, outdoor chess and social chess in more accessible public venues, can play a big positive role.
At Forest Hall Chess Club, since we started meeting in the park, we have been inundated with new members, often children and young people, along with enquiries from people who have taken up online chess during lockdown.
Most of these potential new members want to play OTB, whether that is currently outdoors due to Covid concerns, or indoors as we move towards the end of social distancing regulations.
Another example of a positive local initiative is the Northumbria Masters, which I started three years ago in a modest function room above a pub in Newcastle. This year, despite the pandemic, we expect to have about 150 players taking part in our international congress at the Marriott MetroCentre in Gateshead over the Bank Holiday weekend of August 26-30.
The Northumbria Masters, incorporating a FIDE-rated Open and three rating limited sections, plus 2 all-play-all tournaments to give promising young players the chance of title norms, will be one of the UK’s biggest congresses this year – due to the cancellation of the British Championships in Torquay for a second year running and the absence of many other leading events.
This summer, events such as ChessFest in London and the Northumbria Masters on Tyneside will, I believe, show that it is actually possible to organise successful, relatively large-scale chess events even as we emerge from this terrible pandemic. The key to reviving English chess is also to encourage and support chess at a local, grassroots level, and I urge the ECF to do this wholeheartedly.
Tim Wall is the organiser of the Northumbria Chess Masters, and has served as a Silver Members Representative on the ECF Council since 2020
