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November 27, 2015

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Local expat club grooms enthusiasm for chess

YAO Lan, a ninth grader, often travels two hours from Nantong City in Jiangsu Province to play the board game at the Shanghai Expat Chess Club.

“I really like the atmosphere in the club there, and we don’t really have clubs like that in Nantong. People play competitively, but they also socialize, chat about everything or simply relax,” she said.

“I also like playing with expatriates, because I get to practice my chess skills as well as my English. I get to learn about other countries and cultures.”

Chess is well known in China, thanks to charismatic and world champion players like Xie Jun or Hou Yifan. The game made the headlines after Xie became the first Chinese world champion in the early 1990s, and more recently when the national men’s team won the Chess Olympiad for the first time last August.

Known in China as international chess, its popularity, however, has never been able to surpass that of the Chinese chess, which also follows a similar strategy and is played with flat circular pieces. Its rules also differ with the international chess.

People can be seen playing it on the streets all the time.

It took a while for Alex Karaivanov, a Bulgarian chess instructor, who founded the club last September. The club has more than 100 members, and the numbers are rising as a result of hosting frequent tournaments.

Most players are entry to middle level, while a few of them are experts or professional players. Eighty percent of the members are expatriates, but increasingly more and more Chinese chess fans are signing up. The club even has its own Chinese liaison to help the locals to bed in.

Core members of the club have also started the Chess League at Maya restaurant on November 3. The league, containing four teams of six players each, will run for six rounds and three months, with a competitive game every alternative week and analysis of the games on the other week.

Submission to participate is closed for this year, but all are welcome to watch the games or attend the analysis lectures on Tuesday evenings at Maya.

“Competitive games really attract people,” Karaivanov told Shanghai Daily.

He started reaching out to other interested chess players in the city since he moved to Shanghai three years ago, starting with small gatherings at his place with a handful of friends.

But the numbers started increasing quickly last year and they started a club and organized more than 15 tournaments, both adult and scholastic competitions, invitational, blitz and rapid chess events, quickly drawing more members.

His next plan is to keep expanding the club, invite FIDE (World Chess Federation) masters to give lectures, and to qualify as a FIDE club so that players participating in the local tournaments can get points from the federation.

“The club maintains a good balance between competitiveness and socializing,” said Krassen Mitev, a Bulgarian who has lived in California for years before moving to China.

He added that many clubs in California stage competitive games. And people also know each other and it is difficult for new comers to blend in. But there are some other clubs that has a social side, but he craves for a competitive game.

The Shanghai Expat Chess Club has organized competitive matches with Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, famous for its chess team of Chinese players who started playing chess since kindergarten.

The games also attracted many Chinese enthusiasts, who previously struggled for competitive games on such a big scale.

Yao is famous in the club, not only because she is so young, but because of her commitment to travel all the way and her professional skills. She has won the national championship in her age group, and has represented China in various international tournaments, the most recent one being in Greece.

“I cannot find any player at my level, kids or adults, in Nantong anymore,” she said for her reasons to travel to Shanghai. At 15, she wanted full-time training in chess but was not keen to give up on school, and therefore unable to find a professional coach.

She has been improving her skills on her own through online platforms, but prefers real competitive experience to get the best out of her.

“I can understand her problem. She is not the only one facing this issue, and at her age,” said Xu Hang, a chess lover in his mid-forties who has been competing in the expat club’s chess league.

“It is around this age children and their parents have to decide whether the kid must go professional or not. And there are not many places where you can play games if you are not a professional chess player.”

“Most Chinese clubs are actually training institutions for kids, or professional clubs with coaches, not really for chess lovers. This club and the league are especially nice because we have a mix of Chinese and foreign players, so it actually feels like an international competition,” Xu said.

The mix of both Chinese and foreign players also highlight the difference in the styles, as Mitev and Xu both point out that Chinese players are often great at imitations and open games, while foreign players like Mitev like to surprise them with unseen moves.

Contact karaivanov.alex@gmail.com for more information of the club.




 

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