NEWEST AMERICANS RULE CHAMPIONSHIP
By Grandmaster ANDY SOLTIS
May 27, 2007 — CHESS ADD this to the immigration debate: If it weren’t for the foreign-born, America would be a third-world chess country.
This was evident this month when the U.S. Championship came to the heartland – Stillwater, Okla. – but native Americans were hardly visible in the nation’s most prestigious event.
Latvian-born Alexander Shabalov was running away with the tournament until losing to Alexander Onischuk, the defending U.S. – and former Ukrainian – champion.
Shabalov beat Sergey Kudrin on the final day to take clear first prize, 7-2. Onischuk was second, followed by two other Soviet-born players, Yury Shulman and Gregory Kaidanov, and Julio Becerra, formerly of Cuba.
Joseph Bradford of Texas won his final three games and that enabled him to finish 5-4, the only native-born American with a plus score.
Only a third of the 36 players who qualified for the tournament were born in the U.S. and none of them was among the 18 highest-rated players.
Source: NY Post
This is why the USCF should embrace the help from GM Polgar to home grow our players.
It seems that the same is true with many of the juniors as well
home is, where the heart is – i dislike all this “nationalistic” stuff, because – finally – it is racists stuff…
– when did the US start to be a home? with the arrival of the pilgrims? with the “import” of african born slaves? with the defeat of the french by british troops? with independance day? with the Boston tea party?
otherwise – only natural born americans would meet the figure of merit to be “home born”…
A well meant advice from Germany:
Dear Big Brother – it’s time to learn a lesson from your historic missions to free europe. Your great multi-national-born-nation did it twice …
greetings
Some countries produce people that excel in chess, others excel in leading the world in just about everything else, except soccer.
I don’t see a problem here.
This is a non-issue and definitely racist by inference.
‘American born’ is bad wording and misses the point. It should rather be ‘learned to play chess in america’.
But then you would have to include Nakamura, and the headline wouldn’t be so nice.
Me thinks its as simple as this :
When almost no-one got really good at chess in this country,
then the people responsible for chess in this country are doing something wrong.
To connect this with racism seems absurd.
No it’s “worse” than that. Nakamura didn’t finish in the top 5, so did not qualify for the World Championship cycle in this tournament.
It was a sweep by the eastern European immigrants.
i bet u uits not only with chess, but other activities, america is finallyu catchng up to its doom.
On the one hand, I don’t like the anti-immigration assumption that just because players weren’t born here, they are any less American than those who were born and raised on U.S. soil. On the other hand, it is true that the USCF does not support its young players in a way that is likely to produce a new generation of IMs and GMs like China and India. On the USCF issues forum they are talking about cutting the budget to send the top young players to World Youth Championships, etc. The mentality is so short sighted.
Doom? I don’t think so. These immigrants play in our championships and weekend swisses and I think they also offer chess lessons. They should provide a way to transmit the chess culture from their home countries. Susan is a part of that as well.
Sorry I forgot Becerra; it wasn’t quite an Eastern Europeean sweep.
We have lots of talented young chess players (many of them of Asian descent) with supportive parents but we do not have a national federation that puts training of these young players as a priority. It falls to people like Susan Polgar, Greg Shahade/Gregory Kaidanov (for their U.S. Chess School), the Kasparov Foundation to do the work that our national organization should be doing.
Third world is the wrong way of phrasing things. It just isn’t clear why Americans do badly in chess. It is likely societal, and a study of the reasons would probably show homologous clues into why Americans are not, compared to other countries, living up to their potential in many other areas of life.
I don’t think that it is bad to have immigrants being so strong. They came from countries with strong chess traditions.
What’s needed is for these champions to transfer their love of the game to the known up-and-comers and to the young generation at large. They should write about how, as youngsters, they learned, and how they played, and how others around them played.
I’m not American (I’m pretty close), but I think that the US is so big, it is difficult for a small sport like chess to attract passionate adherents. Maybe if US chess were emphasizing smaller regions some competition and interest could develop. The national model of other US sports cannot easily be translated to chess. To me, it just feels a bit wrong.
In my imagined ideal world, chess would be a social thing, with clubs, and meetings, in association with other sports (for example, your racquet club, community centre or university club could also have a chess club). I’m really not sure if schools should be the primary vehicle of advancing interest in chess to youngsters: it is GOOD to play chess in school, but I just don’t know if it is good to try to build organisations around schools. I’m also sceptical about overuse of the internet and chess programs in developing interest in young or casual players: it is impersonal, doesn’t teach good habits or social graces, and is unlikely to lead to a love for the game. Perhaps someone should study the brain waves and behaviour of a learning or novice player while playing over the internet or against a computer compared to playing in the flesh.
That’s my two cents. I may be taking a too pop-sci look at things, but it could be that the reason why chess is not making inroads, not attracting love, and not developing good players is because the American institutions and way of life are not conducive to chess development. If that is the case, could small changes result in a better american chess ecosystem, or are there societal barriers present that would be more difficult to work through?
>>May 27, 2007 — CHESS ADD this to the immigration debate: If it weren’t for the foreign-born, America would be a third-world chess country.>>
I like Soltis, but this is kind of a silly thing to say. No American GM’s are here illegally. He’s trying to grab the reader’s attention, but he’s doing us a disservice saying that this relates to the immigration debate.