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.jpg) Chessville Plays20 Questions with Alekhine's Parrot Interview by Rick Kennedy
**What are you getting at?
**I can’t imagine any of my Chessville colleagues having inquiring minds. At least, there is no evidence of it after 5 years with them. At one time I thought I had fallen into some society of ‘inmates’ who got loose on the library computer for a couple of hours each Wednesday afternoon. Can this question have arrived via trance-medium? When I interview people I often obtain questions from peers, not from colleagues! I get to the ‘Greats’ in chess such as Susan Polgar in US and Ray Keene in England, plus assorted world champion material – or ‘foreigners’ as you Americans say. I suspect you have done the same and these people have asked me questions somewhere below the ‘fold’. 2. Many chess players know that Alexander Alekhine had two cats, named Check and Mate. You claim to be the World Champion's parrot. Care to dish?
Now, certain parrots are very long in the tooth, and may even have preceded such as Alekhine, may have taught him everything he knew, including how not to be oppressed by French waiters. Cats come and go, I have known dozens. You have to not back off before them, while simultaneously asserting you have claws too, and a beak – a great big beak could bring tears to the eyes!
Cats
are OK at chess, but lazy; not unlike Sammy Reschevsky! He could have
had it all, but you know, there is inspiration and there is work, and these
are companion factors in any success. Morphy was also quite interesting in
this respect – I knew him, Greg – and he also suffered from insight.
Whereas a bit more homework, regular eating habits, and other non-equivocal
behavioral patterns would have set him up to dominate the world! Then there was Fischer – looking over his shoulder, or rather from it, I observed him closely. I think he is less understood still than are his desserts. [Mango and ice-cream.] Yet another American player, brilliant over the board – brilliant without precedent, yet lazy somehow in preparations. For him to have continued (I often spoke in his ear) he would need more technical resource to confront the young tigers like Karpov and Kasparov, but would he do that? NO! He was like Capablanca in his attitude to chess – though the professed to like Morphy most of all – where Capa after losing the world title to Alekhine, said; “if that’s chess, you can keep it.” He was of course referring to two years of intensive application by Alekhine to his own method. To mastering what Capablanca was to chess better than Capa himself. I always felt Fischer was like this, and the, for him, drudgery of suppressing Karpov and crew was not worth the candle. But I digress…
**He talks to anyone interested in the game, and takes consequent action. Whether its Ernie in New York state winning the Duchess County Championship yet again, or if its Mark Taimanov discussing his most famous loss or in an interview dilating on Soviet days, simple direct interest in chess, rightly channeled into publication form is the general idea. Readers seem to respond not to titles of players, but to their direct experience of the game – something which shares itself with others, in a process of transference hardly requiring any finesse. If Phil, who if I may be frank, can tend to go off on lengthy tangents, could bring himself to be less contextual, more to a point! He would no doubt be a better writer.
**David has many problems, which I think why people set-up as publishers in the first place. But the truth of it is, David Surratt and Kelly Atkins started Chessville [Editor: Along with Evan Kreider, Chessville's original webmaster) since they sensed some gap in the chess market which no amount of GM commentary or ritzy web-sites could cover. Along the way Kelly took off for a couple of years after watching ‘The Razor’s Edge’ by Somerset Maugham, and went to Tibet to study sheep farming there. Now he is returned and very active in our editorial and business planning.
About 5 years ago he accused me of writing something intelligible about distance chess, and I wrote him 3 articles [of 4, one pending!] and then, on the night of a full moon he asked if I would like to become business manger of Chessville? A long time passed and I suggested that I could write a column, and what the subject should be, and 17 suggestions for a name. The rest is history. I would say that editorially, I am often the first point of contact with prospective writers or contributors, and my role is to establish if they have something interesting to say. Kelly Atkins then takes over to establish how well they can say it, adding visual information to columns and articles so that, unlike this interview, they are not a wall of text in a sound-bite age, then David Surratt decides whether to publish and how often.
**We have, for sure, 35 readers. Current technology cannot differentiate more than, plus or minus 100,000 [in-house joke!] Somehow these 35 people seem to reside in 100 countries of origin. They also visit our site on average once per hour. Therefore these 60,000 site visits per month are readers who are likely criminal vagrants, international conspirators, and highly mobile people with an ability to move around planet Earth one step ahead of police scrutiny. These statistics make advertisers highly excited, causing them to flood us with revenues. This is the state-of-the-art marketing appreciation which Chessville’s management relates to advertisers and major grant-funding foundations.
** “Of the Players, For the Players” is our motto. That is a factor not so available elsewhere. In fact our current readership and vector seem to be promoting Chessville into the #1 US-based site for world chess reporting. We require talent in appreciating the game, and simultaneously, talent to write about it. That’s it! There is nothing sophisticated in our approach to potential writers. Jan has written well on women in chess, Andy on chess tactics and also on Mil-chess, soon we will see increasing numbers of articles from the historic epi-center of US Chess - the Marshall Chess Club – supplemented by very high level commentaries. Bob Long published my favorite chess book of all time - Journal of a Chessmaster! These are to just address some new folks at Chessville, though the bigger picture is that we are the most quoted site on any site in the world at Wikipedia. I think that is an indicator of the range and depth of what we do. Here is an actual example: I recently contacted a wonderful guy in Jamaica putting on youth chess events there, and we would like to support that effort as well we can. He is not Jamaican originally, but from Pakistan, but he has lived on the island the same time I have lived in the USA, 24 years. The islands have not much money to promote themselves, even to each other, and hardly any publicity. What CV can do is provide them with the latter, and also [privately] look to US chess agencies and entrepreneurs who would support chess, to encourage a chess citizen exchange among youths. Very much of what Chessville does is an exploration of what is possible in this electronic media around the world. After all, if you follow through a good game score, then you appreciate the chess content, no? What does it matter where it comes from? And as an on-line entity Chessville becomes more and more international in its representation of a world game. There is a general sense with us would steer Chessville of going with this momentum – and as a, in effect, pro-bono Caissa entity, the necessity to observe, respect, and perhaps link chess activities around the planet. 10. What would you like to add to the Chessville site over the next six months -- and how can readers be of help?
Some
say rightly that our look is a bit old-fashioned, and some web-help would
also be welcome, though, we tend to deliberately concentrate on content
rather than presentation glitz. (Did I rant there?) 11. You've tackled a number of controversial issues head-on with your Special Reports -- "Polgar & the USCF," "Scholastics - the Soul of Chess?," "Who Cares? - Women and Children in Chess" -- which one, if any one in particular, do you feel strongest about? **Objectively, none. The very highest thing anyone can do in journalism, according to the best journalist in the English language, Oberon Waugh, is to not become attached to any result, but – at genius level – simply to shift people from whatever their current opinion, to consider this too. And that ‘this’ is what you write.
12. & 13. Reader responses and "official" (e.g. USCF) responses to the Reports have been markedly different, haven't they? Who's been listening and doing something, who's simply been listening -- and who's been hiding a head in the sand? **There is as loaded a question as may be asked. I’ll give it straight back to you.
I directly say to them, presuming on my relationship, that they achieve a net-negative in their current positions as board members of USCF. As to that organization, it long ago abandoned its self-stated reason to exist as governmental non-profit for promoting chess in the USA.
Chess in the USA as in my home base UK is in recession. But interest in chess is not, in fact, somewhere, somehow, the sleeping giant of US chess is stirring, despite officialdom. That is my indictment of what the chess public say – as best I can fairly represent it here in a few words – with the inertia and lethargy of those who propose themselves as ‘representatives’ of us all. It is the reader’s sense of a trust, betrayed.
**Yes. An officer of the Chess Journalists of America [the CJA] has blown the whistle on that organization and its relationship to USCF. Having made initial contact, and explored the scene for 2 years, then forwarded the material via Chessville’s editorial I cannot anticipate my editor’s choice of what to say or not, nor the publisher’s to publish or not, nor steal their thunder! Sorry about that! 15. The "slow" nature of chess events in the U.S. has occasionally drawn comments from you such as "Nothing happened in the USA this week [11/25/06]." To what do you attribute this general dearth of activity, and what might liven things up a bit? ** ”Only Connect” said a philosopher. The truth is that there may have been plenty of activity, but absent any reporting it of it… This is sometimes true of even Euro GM events, whose reporting sites say nothing more than who won and a picture of a grinning victor with the major and a bit cup. Good reporting, in chess or anything else, has something to do with the players of the game, their drama in competition, whether they are age 7 or 47. What readers connect with is that drama. Many US sites do not seem to understand that giving them a free TLA report at Chessville, and then a mention of who is playing, and then nothing whatever afterwards is hardly connecting with the chess community. Where is any human dimension in their event?
**Lots of people work beneath the presentation aspects of major chess celebrities. Without them presenting the game’s potential could not be fulfilled. Susan and Paul are very good, very good indeed, up front presenters of chess, and continuously organize events which gain major media attention. There are no others.
What I should say about that is uncertain – there are no precedents in this country to make proper commentary or establish comparative context. But to understand this duo, what they achieve is to gain interest, support and momentum from the holy grail of any cultural activity; they achieve interest from mainline media in print and in film, and also from mainstream education. No one did that here before – and, since I write privately with them, and maintain confidences which are essential – I still aver that what they achieve as leaders of chess in the United States is something of a puzzle to them too! It is not so much a matter of planning what should be, than as exploring what is actually possible.
**It’s a sad scene. There is no official support from anyone and a few collegiate players have done what they could to evolve matters. I would not say that the extent of engagement in what is achieved is healthy, instead what we have is at considerable effort on the part of organizers, and not likely sustainable. 18. Likewise, you have shown interest in different aspects of chess research, listing connections to different theses, encouraging participation. Is this a personal interest, or are you just being helpful? **Deeply personal. Apart from any Chessville connection, I am working with a pioneer of distance learning and home-schooling activity in the USA, to produce a chess course which at high-school level can receive academic credit. Maybe you don’t like Latin, but like chess? There is also a subsidiary course for novice players and their parents. This is a complex negotiation, but seems likely to go ahead. My sources are some of the best chess teachers in the world, and some of the best educators too. Chessville will soon publish, for example, a new Australian study into chess. This is in the great tradition of Adrian de Groot, and Howard Gardner, who took the game seriously and found very much to recommend it. Researchers play an important part in differentiating what we propose about our game, to what is actually measurable. When one encounters mainstream educational requirements, for example, then the cheerful talk about benefits or chess are quickly converted into what can be substantiated. This is why we should encourage and honor efforts made in serious chess research. That is, if we are dissatisfied with the way things are.
**Any nemesis, literally from the Greek, is a distribution of what is due. If you are Asian perhaps you prefer the variant ‘karma’. Both sources are to do with justice. My conflicts are with those who have given up on chess, are cynical of things, who do not profess any joy in the game whatever, and treat is as a librarian would of some abstruse subject, according to what is published and ‘authoritative’. Nothing really to do with the justice or worth the game plays in out times. In other words, I tend to conflict with the living dead. 20. What question have I overlooked, or what question would you like to answer? ** A good question! My answer to what I would like to be asked is the same as when I am a reader, what do I would like to read?
What is the value of this game to you? That is the question I want to be asked, and which I ask other people all the time. ---
I say again, after all this, then yet… I particularly like writing with people who understand what I have just written. Cordially, The Parrot.
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Yet, what do Chessville readers
really know about Alekhine's Parrot? That the doughty Estorillian, at times
vocal, at times discreet (prone to "honorable" chess gossip), is not yet a
century old, still wants to have fun, has an appreciation of the chess
player H.E. Bird and had a past dalliance with an artificial intelligence
named Zed... Can you fill in some details? Inquiring minds want
to know!
**Alekhine
had a high squeaky voice, and a good editor would find the BBC archive URL
for an interview with him [interviewer unknown] dating from, I think 1939.
If you can identify the interviewer you win the star prize – contact BBC
immediately. [Editor: Your wish is my command:
3.
Your interpreter, Phil Innes, seems to hang around the neighborhood a
lot. Who is he, and what does he actually do at Chessville?
4.,
5. & 6. Is Chessville actually the creation of you and Leo the Lion (aka
David Surratt)? What were the early days like? Was it really a
jungle out there??
David
never moved an inch, and was always central to Chessville’s affairs.
He recruited the fantastic Pablo from Madrid, simultaneously making
Chessville bi-lingual, and also a long time review editor, the Dane, Dr.
Jens Madsen, increasing the international scope of things. Since then
he has added all sorts of strange people – Israeli psychologists, even
Australians! Even New Yorkers!
7. Expound a bit on
the reach of Chessville these days: about how many readers, in how many
countries, get "
8. & 9. Chessville has
continued to add to its impressive array of writers and columnists, recently
**They
can bloody-well volunteer to help! We have so many things to keep
together that to maintain the very high quality of contributor’s work needs
infra-structural help on their part. We particularly need assistance
to the publisher’s role, as assistant publisher, as link-meister, as project
manager – and also more editorial help to the senior editor.
Very
evidently the worth of chess itself is now making its appearance in
mainstream considerations, usually in respect of self esteem of
‘participants’ in chess. While the academic benefits are also
increasingly measurable, I think these are rather secondary aspects to the
prime phenomenon of playing the game – which is its social aspects.
These are usually cited only as for youth, as a foundation for their lives.
Yet to be very serious a moment, we see adults acting without any check
between aggression and actions. There is no cultural medium to take
that aggression and render it as a ritual and culturally acceptable form of
expression. The result from a national level is, so it seems to me,
the sending in of the bombers. Or at street level, firing off the
Saturday-night special.
I think
with 1-in-100 citizens now incarcerated in the USA, then this subject
deserves more scrutiny..jpg)
I am on
good terms with Susan Polgar, perhaps the best chess-promoter in the world,
and also her husband Paul Truong, whose art and energy make is so!
What
regular chess playing folks say, publicly and privately is, according to my
mail-bag, exactly that sense of things. Of not having a credible
national organization which represent players rather than chess politicians.
14. Is there another
hot Report coming out any time soon?
16. You appear to
(rightly so) be a big fan of Susan Polgar, and her (and her
husband's) efforts to expand chess in the USA. Who else is spreading
the news about our Royal Game?
Certainly Jude Acers is some form of current day George Koltanowsi, and
Michael Aigner at distance teaching. Todd Bardwick and that Heisman guy are
mainstream teachers, but all of them, I warrant, would attest to this extra
+++ extra+++ level attained by Polgar/Truong in penetrating
mainstream media.
17. Chessville readers
will have noted your role in facilitating intercollegiate chess competition.
How do things stand these days, and how would interested university
teams become involved?
19.
Some chess players seem to thrive on personal challenges or challengers.
Who (or what) out there is the Parrot's personal nemeis, and how have you
clashed?
I want
to interact with the real world of chess players, new people, and those who
have existed at the very heights of the game, and simply discuss with them
what it all means to them.
I like
the very forms of the pieces; the idea of their interactions; the social
possibilities of engaging what in Russian is always called ‘partner’, not
‘opponent’; I like to fight; I like to win; I like to assess what loss is;
and after a life playing the game, I also like what comes after all these
appreciations.
