Quiet Please

Posters are starting to go up around my neighborhood for the Moscow Sports Festival. I got a good close look at the one hanging on the front door to my building the other day. Item #1 in the list of events celebrating “youth and sports culture”: a chess tournament.

I love the fact that the Russians consider chess a sport. They report the results of matches in the newspaper right next to recent hockey games. In fact, coverage of chess is probably more consistent than the press coverage of a lot of other sports here. The main gist of international hockey and tennis stories is how the Russians are taking over and dominating those sports – no report of a whole NHL game, just highlights of the Russian players scoring. No real coverage of the US Open, just reporting about how well the Russian tennis prodigies are seeded.

But chess – that just strikes me as something different all together. I suppose it belongs to that class of activities where spectators are expected to be silent. Like golf and tennis. As such, one would expect it to attract a – well – better class of fans. Golf, tennis, and chess are unlikely to have rowdy fans with their faces painted in gaudy colors. Organizers probably don’t have to suspend beer sales after halftime, either. Upsets in those sports seem unlikely to be accompanied by riots and looting and news reports tallying the number of cars overturned and set on fire.

But chess is different from Golf and Tennis in that the players are exercising quiet contemplation without any physical exertion at all. It’s arguable whether Maria Sharapova or Tiger Woods can be distracted by background noise. After all, they’ve made the same backswing, stroke and follow through many, many thousands of times in their careers. But shout something like “You da man!” at a chess tourney and they may have to take a few days off to recover their trains of thought.

I’ll keep an eye on the papers, but so far I haven’t seen anything concerning steroids scandals in the chess world. Nor does it seem that chess stars are running afoul of the law in other even more nefarious ways – like NFL or NBA stars. Of course, what would a chess star be liable to do that would garner such attention? I don’t envision a “cocaine and prostitutes” type story – something more like being ejected from the local library for repeated whispering.

Anyway, we could do with a bit more celebration of the intellectual in our society. I’m not advocating the elevation of a slow-paced, boring-to-watch, parlor game to the level of national pastime. After all, we have baseball and that satisfies 2 of the 3 criteria I just laid out. But we might just have a little to learn from the consistent practice of stopping to think about our next move.