Add tennis players as chess prodigies

(Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images)

GM of the tennis court, Roger Federer will face Andy Roddick in Wimby final match

Just recently, I posted about the argument that Chess and Go are the two best games in the world as Basketball, football, boxing among other popular sports humbly associates themselves with the game of chess. Heck even politicians claims they are better with their rivals at "chess battles" during the campaign periods. What a flattery for chess players and this blogger is taking advantage of it! Now add tennis and its top players to the list of sports who wants to share the limelight with chess for the opportunity to be in the same photo of Kasparov and Fischer as memorabilia! The problem with this sports who lavishly praises chess is that once the game tends to become dull and boring, especially boxing and mixed martial arts, they are quick to blame chess! Come on now. Below are excerpts from bleacherreport.com

Chess is a mental game: Reactions, intuitions, and judgement form a pivotal part in the player's gaming process than anything else, which ultimately carve out a superior player of the two.

These past few days, Roddick's game has started resembling a chess board with the coins neatly arrayed across a chiaroscuro of 64 squares with every next move planned and played after gauging repercussions after repercussions to follow that particular move.

One doesn't need to be Gary Kasparov or a Bobby Fischer in order to understand how the basic yet convoluted game works, but when it is taken as a chosen profession and where winning is the only thing that matters, then one has to ascend and think to the level of these stalwarts and perhaps even inching beyond them in the process.

And Roddick has started doing that these days, his previously one-dimensional approach has been cut and shaped accordingly to fit the square-less arena of the tennis field.

He has become a perfect amalgamation of a Pawn-ready to strike at the first call, a Bishop-ready to move cross ways in order to sustain, a Rook-attacking and marching forwards, a Knight-valiant enough to try out new approaches, a Queen- with an arsenal that is gunning where the others might fail; instead of his previous acceptance to the role of the King-helpless and unable to defend with very meagre amount of resistance.

Chess and real life time management

Lately, the USCF or United States Chess Federation has been the site of interest for this blogger, owing to successful campaigns by our Filipino players based in the US, particularly Enrico Sevillano and Rogelio Barcenilla among others. Browsing the archives, I came upon this one informative and insightful article by GM Joel Benjamin in his regular column, Ask GM Joel which I want to share with everyone. It's all about time management during actual chess games, and since chess imitates and represents life in many aspects, including real life time management, the article is worth reading not only for improving our games but more importantly on how we can apply what we learn from playing serious chess on our every day life. Here's an excerpt from the article GM Joel on Time Management:

Dear Joel Benjamin,

...I am 11 years old and in sixth grade... When I play the higher rated players I often lose on time because it takes me five to ten minutes to evaluate the position and more time to calculate my moves. Is there any way to see all of these things quicker and still see them thoroughly without taking as much time?

Sincerely,
Isabel


GM Joel Benjamin: You want your thought process to be as efficient as possible. It should go something like this:

1) Examine your opponent’s move to see how it affects the position (does it threaten something, or prevent your plans?).
2) Look for “candidate moves.” This process doesn’t have to exhaustive and should take less than a minute. Two to four candidates should be enough for most moves. Analyze the ones that look best to you, and try not to jump back and forth too much. Don’t feel you have to spend a lot of time (if any at all) on choice #4 if the first option looked really good after a bit of analysis.
3) Make your decision and do a final check for safety before playing your move.

Please read the complete article by GM Joel from the USCF website.