Undoubtedly, the Oasis Cafe has laid the foundation for revitalizing chess in Guyana by providing a venue for two tournaments in January and February.
Chess, it seems, has caught the train to desination ‘Visibility,’ emerging successfully from the dark shadows of obscurity.
This last tournament was played two Saturdays ago and the newly-acquired chess clocks were used officially for the first time. And for the first time too in many years, a chess tournament was conducted under international timekeeping conditions.
And what did we see? We saw games that were rich in theory. We saw games rich with sacrifices. We saw deep combinations on the chessboard, and surprisingly, few games ended in draws. Draws, apparently, were frowned upon.
One ambitious chess player informed me that we would battle to the death. He terrorised me by adding he would give me no quarter. A chess game was war, he explained.
We did not play precise chess. We made many mistakes, winners and losers alike. But we had some of the wildest, maddest, most exhilarating, exciting, enjoyable, ingenious and exasperating contests on the chess board.
Chess is back!