CHESS CHINA, where chess was illegal during the Cultural Revolution, has emerged as one of the world’s leading chess nations – without producing individual stars.
In the last few weeks, a visiting Chinese national team defeated Russia 521/2-47½ in Nizhny Novgorod, then trounced the British national team, led by Michael Admas and Nigel Short, by 28-22 in Liverpool.
The Chinese managed to do this without having a single player among the world’s 20 highest-rated grandmasters.
Who are those guys?
Well, they do have a future star in 20-year-old Wang Yue, ranked 22nd in the world. But the strength of Chinese chess seems to lie in solid base of young, less-known masters.
Chinese players have the highest average rating of any nation on the most recent world chess federation list. Their 330 players average 2245. (The United States is fifth with an average of 2204).
They are also extraordinarily young. The average age of the British team in Liverpool was 29. For the Chinese it was 20.
Two of the world’s top players under age 20 are Chinese. Three of the world’s seven highest-rated girls are Chinese.
BRIDGE “MY partner and I are both decent players,” a reader writes, “but we’re not meshing as a pair. Our bidding has gotten better, but when we’re on defense we seem to operate on different wavelengths. How can we save our partnership?”
Preparation is essential for any aspiring partnership: World-class pairs go into battle having discussed their bidding and signaling methods for hundreds of hours. But no pair will improve unless they assess their results to see where they are losing points.
When you critique your results, put your ego aside. Two monologues do not equal a dialogue, and to accomplish anything, each player must be willing to criticize himself as well as his partner.
In today’s deal, West led a club against 3NT, and South won and led a heart to dummy’s nine. East took the queen and shifted to the queen of diamonds: six, seven, deuce. When he led the jack next, South guessed well to play low again. When West took the ace, South’s only other loser was the ace of hearts.
Let’s listen to East-West’s discussion after the game:
West: “We should beat 3NT. I must overtake your queen of diamonds with the ace to get out of your way and return my low diamond. You cash two diamonds when you take the ace of hearts.”
East: “I should make it easy for you. I must lead the eight of diamonds, not the queen, so you won’t have a chance to go wrong.”
That’s a constructive and supportive postmortem, and a sign of a partnership that will succeed.