COJA 2007 CHESS AFTERMATH: Not yet Uhuru for Nigerian Chess
The 9th All-Africa games, Algiers 2007 came to an end earlier this week with the chess
event being dominated by Egypt. Nigeria did well at the competition considering the
number of tournaments played in the country, the rating of our players, and the fact that we
finished above the host country, Algeria, in both the male and female events.
Our ladies did us very proud, winning 3 individual gold medals, and the team silver
behind Egypt. The male team could not match its feat in Abuja 2003 as it came up
4th behind Egypt (once again?), South Africa and Zambia who finished in 1st, 2nd and 3rd
places respectively.
Here, I would like to look at the factors affecting the overall team performance, and how they could be alleviated or eradicated (using the common parlance on the Nigerian political scene).
Factors which affected the teams’ performance include those caused by the quality of
chess organization in the country, how the individuals treat chess and the Nigerian
perception about chess in general.
Organizational Factors
No Chess Calendar
One thing that is evidently lacking in the Nigerian chess scene at the moment is that
basic tool; A calendar. Without it, we do not have a real plan for events, and as such,
tournaments just stumble on us and we take a Fire Brigade approach (which is not
peculiar to chess anyway). If we do have a chess calendar, we’d be able to prepare
adequately for tournaments. It’s not going to be an easy task to build a calendar, of
course, but, with determination, we can get 4 high-level national tournaments and
get up to 20 players to go abroad for competitions twice a year.
Inadequate Sourcing For Capital
For a calendar to be effective, we need capital. The best sources of capital are corporate
sponsors but chess sponsors seem to have been reducing in number over the years. We
need to reverse this trend, make our past sponsors come back to us and attract more
sponsors to our dear sport.
Poor Quality of Venues
The pre-qualifiers for Algiers 2007 (see the article by Demola Sorungbe, our roving
correspondent); chess was played in the open. I’ve also played chess before in a
badly-lit room. These are obviously not acceptable anywhere else in the world.
Good venues aren’t only essential for deep thought and calculation, which are both vital to chess, they also improve the prestige of the game. If we make more frequent use of good
venues, like the Union Bank Sports Club, Bode Thomas Street, Surulere, the venue of
the 1st V-mobile Ultimate Chess Challenge, or even well-lit gymnasiums in the various
stadia across the country, the level of concentration of players in games would improve
and more people (potential sponsors) would be drawn to the game.
Lack of Refresher Courses
Also, chess players, coaches, arbiters, managers and aficionados alike should go for
refresher courses abroad to improve on their different roles in the sport. This is actually
a medium-term possibility, which would happen only when we’ve gotten multi-national
corporations as our sponsors or the Federal and State Governments have seen the
importance of chess, just like science, as a key tool in the development of human
intellect. Right now, we can seek FIDE’s assistance (or the African chess organization’s)
to help us get in touch with the latest advancement in each of these areas, via electronic
means or otherwise.
Time-control
A recurring problem with every chess tournament I’ve been in is that of time-control.
During the World University Chess Championships- WUCC 2006 pre-qualifiers,
Ibadan when it was even reduced by 30 minutes for each player.
We should have more tournaments with at least a 2-hour control for each player.
The value of time-control is seen when Dennis Monokroussos, the Playchess trainer on
chessbase.com was asked why his USCF rating dropped from 2434 to low-mid 2300s-“too
much blitz, too little tournament chess”, he said.
Individual Factors
Inadequate Preparation
As the saying goes in real life, “the first impression is always a lasting one”. Imagine
meeting someone for the first time and the person neglects you, saying neither hello nor
hi, nor even showing any sign of your existence, the likelihood of your friendship or any
kind of good relationship existing between you both is almost zilch.
As it is in life, so it is in chess. If you give the impression that you don’t have the proper
chess manners of centre-control, development, sound knowledge of opening theory, you
would most likely struggle in the middle-game and, more often than not, you would lose!
Good practice is to have at most five openings that you prepare for a tournament and
continue to study them and use them in praxis until you understand the aims and hidden
tricks of these openings. After this, you can begin to adopt openings that fit your style of
play and subsequently improve your style of play. It’s as simple as this: “Proper Prior
Preparation Prevents Poor Performance”.
Chess Psychology
Former World Champion, Bobby Fischer once said he won a lot of games before they
even began because his opponents feared him due to his overwhelming reputation.
Psychology is not a new thing to Nigerians as we use it and experience it in our everyday
lives. We should make moves, not because we are playing grandmasters or fishes, but
because they are good moves.
We chess players should be immune to such things as outside distractions, smiley faces,
poker faces, delay tactics (spending 30 minutes on an obvious move), regular movement
to and from the toilet, just to mention a few.
Team Communication
Unified World Champion, GM Vladimir Kramnik won each and every one of his World
Championships with one thing- his team. We are privileged to have as our coaches highly
experienced and very active players who know the strengths and weaknesses of a lot of
players (including those of some foreign professionals). Because of this, our coaches can
advise players on choice of openings, approach to middle-game and endgames they are
comfortable with (and those opponents are uncomfortable with).
For example, arguably the best chess player ever, who now disturbs President Putin in
Russian politics, Garry Kasparov, said he chose closed formations in his games against
Deep Fritz, as computers can best exercise their calculating prowess in open positions.
Working with his team must have shown him this. Team play has also been the secret
of the Russian team at various Olympiads, and also, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife
and Yabatech (now City University, Yaba) teams at various competitions.
The Environmental Factors
Poor Media Coverage
One of the best things that could happen to Nigerian chess now is to have a weekly
1-hour show on radio or TV like “Bayo Teaches Chess”, anchored by Adebayo “Littlebee”
Adegboyega on Lagos Television (LTV) in the 1990s. We could also have a chess column
like Raymond Keene’s “Keene Chess” of “The Times” of London on one of our newspapers.
This would enlighten the general public on chess and could pave the way for a quarterly
Chess (or Intellectual Sport) magazine and draw more sponsorship to Nigerian chess.
Absence of School Chess, Club Competitions
Although there are some chess clubs in the country, they do not organize regular,
competitive and financially-rewarding tournaments. It’s great to see chess return to our
schools, but I hope there would be much more competitiveness in school chess tourneys
in years to come.
The Nigerian Economy
That the economic situation in Nigeria is bad is no longer news. This has in many ways
slowed down the progress of chess in Nigeria; so, if chess would grow in Nigeria, it needs
to be made financially independent of the Nigerian government. The Nigeria Chess
Federation should seek advice from the Scrabble, Taekwando or Table-Tennis organization in the country and find out what they are doing to make progress in these sports despite the fact that
Nigeria’s economy is not in the best of states.
In conclusion,it’s clear that Nigerian chess has tremendous potential, but it has quite a few cogs in its wheels of progress. From the various problems highlighted above, the recent outing at Algiers 2007 and the prescribed solutions, Nigerian chess still has some catching up to do with the rest of the world. But we can, if we “set forth at dawn”.
By Kolawole Ladokun