Chess success in Australia

Chess bored? Not anymore, find pupils
Orietta Guerrera
October 11, 2008

JULIA Goh stares intently at the chequered board. Ignoring other students milling around her, she plots her next move.

The prep student from Doncaster Primary School has been playing chess for two years — learning the basics from her parents and older sister, and practising by competing against the computer. She spends one lunchtime a week polishing her skills at her school’s chess club.

Assistant principal Robyn Grace said teachers were already reporting improvements in students’ social skills and problem-solving ability.

The popularity of chess has risen among junior ranks in the past decade, with a growing number of Victorian schools including the game in their curriculum. Many hire professional coaches to take classes during school hours, and run clubs at lunchtimes and after school.

A decade ago there were only a couple of businesses making a dollar from chess coaching. David Cordover, founder of market leader Chess Kids and former national junior chess champion, says there are now 13 businesses in Victoria alone.

The high-school dropout was in his late teens when he began taking chess lessons at his younger brother’s primary school. Two years later in 1997 Mr Cordover convinced a couple of friends to help him run lessons in school and Chess Kids was incorporated. The 30-year-old now employs six full-time and 23 part-time or casual coaches who work with 645 schools across five states and territories.

Most telling, Mr Cordover says, is the number of students who participate in the annual national interschool championships organised by his business. The event, which started in 2002 with only a few hundred players, now attracts 9000.

On Monday, as Russian Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanathan Anand from India prepare to battle it out in the World Chess Championship in Bonn, Germany, about 1000 students will compete in the Victorian state finals at Ivanhoe Grammar School. “Ten or 15 years ago chess was seen as a nerdy activity, and intellectual ability and intelligence wasn’t seen in the same light as it is today,” Mr Cordover said. “(But) people now realise that the heroes of the world are not necessarily always the sportspeople. But the more successful people in today’s world, are your Bill Gates, your Richard Bransons and J. K. Rowlings.”

Recent migrants, particularly from Russia and Eastern Europe where many grow up playing chess, have also significantly boosted the profile of the game.

Source: http://www.theage.com.au/