Rishi Sunak wants chess revival, a game often at center of geopolitics – The Washington Post

Fischer agreed, eventually winning the “match of the century” and ending 24 years of unbroken Soviet chess dominance — a record the U.S.S.R. felt proved its intellectual might.

This summer, five decades after Fischer bested Spassky, British prime minister Rishi Sunak reportedly hopes to start a “great British chess revival,” pouring funding into the English Chess Federation and school chess clubs in a bid to boost children’s numeracy.

As the Kissinger-Fischer call shows, he’s not the first world leader to yoke broader policy goals to the royal game. The idea that chess can help a nation’s fortunes stretches back at least a century, culminating in Fischer and Spassky’s meeting. And as the Chess World Cup continues this month, there are rumblings of future chess wars to come.

The first stirrings of the chess Cold War happened the same week World War II ended.

From Sept. 1 through 4, 1945, American and Soviet chess teams played each other via radio receivers during the same week Japan signed its official surrender. Given Soviet players’ infrequent participation in international competition during the 1930s, the Americans felt confident.

“There is no reason for misgivings as to the outcome of the forthcoming match by radio on ten boards with Soviet opponents,” the New York Times wrote in a preview of the games.

But the Soviet team, including future world champion Mikhail Botvinnik, stunned their American counterparts, winning or drawing nearly every game.

The United States probably should not have been surprised.

Even before the Russian Revolution, rulers such as Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great and Communist leaders such as Vladimir Lenin played — the first of whom allegedly died while at the chessboard. The Soviet regime formalized that passion, creating a state-run Chess Section in 1924. Children learned chess in school, and signs of talent occasioned further training from grandmasters or other top players.

“There was ample state funding at all levels, which ensured that there were chess clubs all over the country, from Moscow to small villages in Siberia, in army divisions and in factories,” wrote chess player Andrey Terekhov on the platform Chess24.com. During the Cold War, the system paid dividends, producing a series of world champion players, including Botvinnik, Mikhail Tal and Tigran V. Petrosian.

Soviet officials and chess magazines saw the game as a way to prove dominance over Western countries. They also drew connections between chess and their political goals, historian Seth Bernstein wrote in an article on the Soviet chess system.

“For some Bolshevik leaders, chess games bore a similarity to the dialectical processes of historical progress,” Bernstein wrote. Soviet psychologists produced a study of chess masters arguing the skills the game developed could lead to a revolutionary consciousness.

Before the Fischer-Spassky match, the U.S. government had been by comparison uninterested in chess, said Brady, Fischer’s biographer. Millions of Soviet citizens played chess at its peak popularity; the U.S. Chess Federation had roughly 2,000 tournament players by the late 1950s, he added.

Still, Kissinger recognized the 1972 match’s significance, and Fischer returned to the United States a hero. His victory spawned a “Fischer boom” that saw U.S. Chess Federation membership nearly double in one year.

The rise of Internet chess and people’s ability to play against opponents all over the world has somewhat lessened the country-based nature of training, said Bill Wall, who has written several chess books.

While the peak of the American-Soviet rivalry may be past, some countries still see chess as both a way to develop children’s math and strategy skills and a potential geopolitical boon.

Grandmaster and coach Boris Avrukh, who has trained several current top-ranked players, told The Post he’s watching a rising generation of Indian chess wunderkinds, many of whom trained during a period of governmental and institutional support for the game. Chinese players have also ascended over the past several decades through state-backed training programs.

Russia’s love for chess is likewise not entirely past. The presidency of FIDE, the international chess governing body, is currently occupied by Arkady Dvorkovich, whose father was a chess arbiter and who previously worked for the Russian government.

“Chess has always been a symbol of intelligence, strategy and tactical maneuvering. If a nation can win on the chess board, it implies that they may be able to outwit other countries diplomatically,” Brady said.