Increasing the ability to concentrate, promoting problem-solving skills, training adherence to rules – when Athanasios Vassiliou talks about the positive effects of chess, it is difficult to explain why so many schools do not have such offers. The chess association and its advisor want to change that as soon as possible.
Paul Meyer-Dunker has been President of the Chess Federation for over a year. He grew up with the brainteaser himself and is a great advocate of school chess. This year, therefore, the school chess championship is to be launched again. There are basically two game principles. The rapid chess championship, in which the entire tournament is played in one day, and the regular school chess championship, which is played in a league system over several months. The tenders for both tournament variants will run until mid-September.
Meyer-Dunker says that the tournament between the schools “was an important cornerstone for the sport of chess, which has fallen asleep due to Corona”. Now he hopes that as many schools as possible will register and that the competition will “get off to a great start again”. Depending on their capacity, the schools provide one or more teams from different age groups, consisting of at least eight representatives. They then play against each other on a total of eight boards. The overall tournament extends over half a year, in which home and away games are played in the first and second half of the year. At the end of the season there is a table winner, the Berlin-Brandenburg school chess champion. The best teams in the table even qualify for the German school chess championship.
This type of game is not a normal game of chess, but creates its own group dynamics between the children. Schools chess championship speaker Vassiliou speaks of an educational tool that promotes concentration, problem-solving skills, dealing with victory and defeat, and maintaining fair play. The championship should therefore bring more children to chess again. Meyer-Dunker is certain that the more sport there is at school, the more children will later find their way into the club.
That is why the association provides boards and teaching materials and trains teachers through the “Schach macht Schule” program in order to promote the sport. Meyer-Dunker’s goal is ambitious: to establish chess in every school in Berlin. But even if that were only possible in every third school, it would be an enormous improvement.
