Bangkok Chess Club: A place where you can tune your strategy skills and brain up

When we, Westerners, mention chess, our minds immediately drift to the board game played with kings, queens, rooks, knights, bishops, and pawns. We also think of Garry Kasparov, the Russian who is considered the best chess player of all time, the one who, for years on end, couldn’t even be beaten by IBM’s smartest computer. The controversial 1997 loss against IBM’s Deep Blue did not succeed in topping Kasparov from his number one place in the top ten best chess players of the world.

When the Thais hear the word chess, the electrical signals sent by their neurons make the connection to makruk, the word for Thai chess, a game highly popular with the population of Thailand (and Cambodia). You can see motorbike taxi drivers playing this game of Indian origins at many corners in Bangkok, patiently waiting for their next passenger (or the next traffic jam to whistle through). According to B.D. Prichard’s book Popular Chess Variants, as of year 2000, two million Thais actively play makruk and 5000 of them also play chess.

Although over 600 million people play chess around the world (thus making it the most popular Olympic sport), it is not wise to undermine makruk. On the contrary, Vladimir Kramnik, another Russian former world chess champion, admitted that Thai chess is more strategic than international chess.  Also, in his 1913 History of Chess, H.J.R. Murray identified makruk as the ancestor of all chess variants played today.

But what if you want to find a bunch of Western chess aficionados for a friendly game? In that case, I recommend the Bangkok Chess Club (BCC), founded by Kai Tuorila, a Finish national who has made Thailand his home. Apart from being the chairman of Bangkok Chess Club, Kai is also FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs) International Organizer and Rating Officer of Thailand Chess Association (TCA). An active player, Kai currently ranks 18^th on the FIDE rating list for the members of the Thailand Chess Federation. James Constance from England ranks 14^th on the same list, while the rest of the players above are Thais.

Official men’s ranking by country list Thailand on the 98^th place in the top 100. Thailand’s neighbours do slightly better, with Myanmar on the 92^nd and Malaysia on the 77^th places. My own country, Romania, ranks 23^rd while the top three positions are held by Russia, Ukraine and China. The top player for Thailand is Wisuwat Teerapabpaisit, a 40 year old FIDE Master.

Thanks to Chanida Taweesupmun, a 27 years old Thai player, the statistics for women list Thailand on the 81^st place. Our neighbour Malaysia ranks on the 72^nd while Myanmar on the 59^th. Romania goes up on the 13^th place and the top three countries are Russia, China and Georgia.

So, what do all these numbers tell us? They tell us that there’s potential both locally and regionally and, with the help of such civic organizations as Bangkok Chess Club, there might be a time in the future when Thailand could become a chess powerhouse.

Bangkok Chess Club is recognized worldwide as being the organizer of some of the best open championships. Together with his collaborators from TCA, Kai has been organizing an annual Thailand Open Chess Championship for some years now. The 2011 event was recently won by Jan Gustafsson, a German Grandmaster. BCC is a hub of great chess players that attracts not only resident expats but also chess lovers who are in Thailand for a short period of time. In 2010, Grandmaster Anatoly Karpov (a seven-time world chess champion) and Richard A. Conn Jr. (a prominent American attorney) visited BCC and TCA officials.

If you are interested in playing chess with a large variety of nationalities, then you should be pleased to know that Bangkok Chess Club meets twice a week. Every Tuesday evening chess boards are set up at Roadhouse Barbecue on the corner of Surawong and Rama IV Roads (the nearest skytrain BTS station is Sala Daeng or the Siom MRT metro station). The Friday meeting takes place at Queen Victoria Pub and Restaurant on Sukhumvit Soi 23 (the nearest means of public transportation are Asoke BTS or Sukhumvit MRT).

Usually, players begin to arrive at 6:30 pm but tournaments begin at about 8 pm. There are over 200 active members in the club, so you will most likely find someone your own standard to play with, no matter if you’re a beginner or a master. On most meetings they play blitz, or fast chess, a type of chess game in which each side is given less time (5 minutes/player/game) to make their moves than under normal tournament rules.  Attendance and membership is free, though the pubs kind of expect each player to order at least a drink or two. Both pubs have great restaurants with a wide variety of Western food on offer.

Chess is for everyone, the old, the young, boys, girls, no mater of nationality. Maybe the greatest thing about chess is that you can have two players who can’t understand each other’s language, but who can still have an entertaining game of chess together. It is a game that fosters intellectual development and some countries, such as Armenia, have even made it compulsory in schools. I believe many schools in Thailand have opened chess (and makruk) clubs for their students. Even myself have started an unofficial chess club for my students at Keerapat International School, although I’m not an exceptionally good chess player. Nevertheless, it is important to expose today’s youth to as many brain teasers as possible. In the future, when I’ll have nothing to teach them, they can move to Bangkok Chess Club or the other clubs promoting chess in Thailand.

Thailand Chess Association and Chess 4 Thai are two similar organizations which mostly cater to Thai players. For more information about Bangkok Chess Club, check out their website.

Originally published in “Bangkok Trader” (Vol. 5, No.8, August 2011)