Chess Kids: an exercise in humility
Submitted by
on Fri, 06/13/2008 at 5:54pm.
Four years ago, playing in an inter-club team competition, I admitted to a non-chess playing friend that I had been beaten by a twelve year-old girl. “Ooh! That's embarrassing,” she said. “Not when it's this twelve year-old,” I told her. Two years later my opponent, Angela Song, became the first girl to win the Australian Junior Championship, and the youngest person ever to do so.
It's easy to underestimate children but, to those of us who have played a few tournaments, it's obvious that this year's easy victory is next year's nemesis. It pays to be cautious so that we don't end up with egg on our faces.
I had a hiatus from chess from about 1987. I started playing on line in 2002 then went back to over-the-board play in 2004.
The thing I found most surprising was the enormous leap junior chess had made in Australia during that time. Previously there had been a reasonable percentage of juniors playing, but nowhere near the number that we have now.
Once, during the 1970s, I heard one man complaining bitterly because he had to play an early teenager. With no thought for the boy's feelings he ranted to the tournament director and to all around that he hadn't “come here to play with children.” Unfortunately for him, this was a kid who knew how to play and there was much hilarity at the end of the game when the lad queened three pawns, and totally humiliated the man in front of the laughing spectators. (The guy wouldn't resign, hoping for a draw but the boy was too smart for that: he knew as well as anybody there that all those queens were unnecessary but this was PAYBACK!)
One of my own sons had a similar problem about the same time. At ten years of age he looked more like an angelic eight year-old and his opponent at an inter-club match felt insulted that he was required to play a child. He was finally persuaded to sit down and we all started to play. Then after about five minutes the man's chair crashed to the floor as he rushed away from the table and out of the hall. We all clustered around to see young Geoff sitting there holding the guy's queen. I only ever taught my kids a few opening traps and the poor man had walked right into one of them.