If anything British Grandmaster Nigel Short yesterday lived up to his name.
Shortly before taking on 20 of the nation’s chess players in a simultaneous exhibition at State House, Short made some remarks which were, pardon the pun, short.
And while his remarks were brief, his vision for the future of chess in Guyana was broad.
Short opined that the goal for Guyana should be to be among the best, if not to be the best chess playing nation in the region.
While Short acknowledged that his visit here was to advance the promotion of chess in Guyana and advise the GCF of the many education programmes and practices that can be implemented, he recognized that there were some challenges in that respect.
“There is some way to go and that’s okay. It’s good to have challenges,” he said.
“What I would like to see in the coming years is Guyana advancing regionally. I think that’s the first step. It’s not to be on the podium with the Russians and the Americans and so on but to become a regional powerhouse and I think this is more than attainable, well within your grasp if you put the right things in place,” he told the gathering which included officials of the Guyana Chess Federation (GCF) and parents of some of the players who were on show during the exhibition.
Short’s take on the immediate goal of the GCF was similar to that of Allan Herbert, Chairman of the FIDE Development Committee for the region, who, on a visit here some years ago made the same observation.
“Back in the late ‘70’s and early `80’s Guyana was the best in chess in the Caribbean. They had the strongest players, and now they have to virtually start over from scratch,” Herbert had told Stabroek Sports.
GCF president Anand Raghunauth, in his remarks said about five years ago the GCF started a programme where children could learn the skills of the game.
“As a result of that we had incremental improvements.
Today we had the problem of which 20 players to play, a good problem because easily we could have had 40 players and that’s a good thing,” Raghunauth added.
“We’ve moved to a good place we’ve had the backing of the administration and we’ve just been given one million Guyana dollars from His Excellency,” Raghunauth disclosed to a smattering of applause from the gathering.
Short was just 10-years-old when he burst upon the scene by defeating Soviet Grandmaster Victor Korchnoi in a simultaneous exhibition.
Some of the players who participated in yesterday’s exhibition in Candidate Master (CM) Taffin Khan, Fide Master (FM) Anthony Drayton, Davion Mars, Roberto Neto, Ethan Lee, Woman Candidate Master Sheriffa Alli, Jessica Callender, Nellisha Johnson, 2022 National Women’s Champion Pooja Lam,
2022 Junior Champion Ricardo Narine, 2023 Under-14 Open Champion Kyle Couchman, 2023 U14 Girl’s Champion Anaya Lall, 2023 National U-12 Champion Aquilani Swaminadha and 2022 University of Guyana Champions Keron Sandiford and Sasha Shariff, might hope to emulate that feat of beating a Grandmaster.
Yesterday’s Simultaneous Exhibition was sponsored by Arrowten, Marics, Mobile Lubricants, Topco, Diamond Water and Digicom.
