Over the board chess has been dead for some months. Covid saw to that. Excellent work has been done across Clubland and within the NLC to keep some form of chess going through through online chess evenings. They have been great fun and to many a real support through difficult days deep in lockdown. But as good as online chess may be, it’s just not quite the same as over the board chess.
We are some way away from getting ‘back to usual’ with chess. One suspects that interclub matches of old won’t return until well in to 2021. But all is not lost. There is some scope to start some form of over the board chess and the NLC is beginning to try things out.
On Tuesday 25 August the NLC Chess Circle held an experimental evening of covid-secure over the board chess.
The importance of the risk assessment
Caution was our watchword. Before any chess was attempted a full risk assessment was conducted using the ECF Covid Risk Assessment Framework. Here is the NLC Risk Assessment, with mitigating actions. There is nothing slapdash about our approach.
How the evening went
Mister Widdicombe was the evening’s organiser and room booker, so it fell to him to be ‘Covid Marshall’ for the evening (as per the risk assessment). He made sure the risk assessment mitigation were followed.
The room was made safe for chess. First, the tables and chairs were thoroughly cleaned with sanitiser:
Next, the board and pieces were thoroughly cleaned:
So with a covid-secure playing area and equipment, over the board chess returned to 1 Whitehall Place.
The players used hand sanitiser before each game, and wore masks throughout their games. The seats were position so that the players remained 1 meter apart:
Each player was provided with a set of white and black pieces for the evening, which only they used and touched. When taking a piece, instead of removing an opponent’s piece, the opponent removed their own piece after an indication that it was to be taken. This riveting video shows this in action (don’t miss the excitement right at the end…):
After each game the players used hand sanitiser again, and wiped down the clock and the board.
And that was how it was done.
What could be improved?
There’s going to be a lot of trial and error in getting over the board chess back. Here are some thoughts the players had on how things could be improved:
- The wiping down of boards, clocks and pieces took a long time, and made the preparation for the evening lengthy. It struck us that as the equipment would be locked away for a week, it would be sufficient to ensure they are wiped down prior to being put away for a week. ECF guidelines recommend quarantining equipment for 72 hours prior to use (the same time that shops are guided to quarantine stock), so in future we may move to not wiping down equipment that has been thoroughly cleaned prior to at least 7 days quarantine.
- The arrangement used for taking pieces was a little cumbersome. It took time and there was occasionally confusion over which piece was to be taken. This was particularly difficult when time was running low. Either short games (i.e. blitz) should be avoided, or perhaps we should think about moving to a system of gently pushing your opponent’s piece out of the way to indicate a take, whereupon your opponent removes their own piece. Still thinking about this one.
- With each player being given their own box of white and black pieces to use that evening it would be handy to have some coloured labels on the lid to ensure players don’t get the boxes mixed up.
- Some players will feel comfortable with coming to the Clubhouse, and playing chess under these conditions, but remain wary of the bar and dining room. The NLC bar has after all been known, on occasion, to have within it members who have become tired and emotional. We may order sandwiches and a few bottles to have in the chess room with a ‘drinks break’ type arrangement halfway through the evening, rather than end earlier and go to the bar/dining room. This allows for the social conviviality we all so much miss without players feeling uncomfortable about going to the bar.
Conclusion
And so we did it. Chess was played. It was small scale, and felt unusual with all the cleaning and the masks. But once the clock was started it felt like chess of old. Certainly the blunders were like the chess of old.
Our Good Friend Mark Taylor summed it up best, when he said:
“As far as the chess protocols are concerned, there is not much to it really. You keep cleaning everything (pieces, clocks, boards etc.) and sit a little further apart. We did wear masks, which was fine for 10 minute games, but you might find restrictive if you were playing for an hour, I guess. And we each had our own chess set which we kept for the evening, so that we only ever touched our own pieces – when taking an opponent’s piece, we had to identify it and ask our opponent to take it off the board. So everything tended to take a little longer, but was otherwise largely unchanged. Our primary conclusion, in fact, was that the difficult part was not the playing chess, it was managing to convince enough people to come into London to play it!”
These are baby steps, and this evening was purely experimental. No-one is yet planning on any full or regular return to competitive chess. That will come in good time. For now, we hope only to demonstrate that safe, covid-secure chess is possible at the NLC.
Should players wish to meet at the Club for some chess, they can be confident that it can be done, and done safely.
