That Strange Chess Thing

It’s not really my inclination to write about non-quiz games, but I feel I should make an exception in the case of “Chess Masters – The Endgame” I mentioned it yesterday when complaining about the BBC postponing the last Mastermind semi-final while keeping this show in place. After all, it wasn’t me who decided to make this show the filling in a Mastermind – UC sandwich. If you don’t want me to comment on it then keep it the hell away from Quizzy Mondays.

Let me state my lack of chess credentials before I start. Draughts was my game when I was five years old – nobody in the house could beat me. Apart from my Dad, that is. I never once managed to beat him and Lord knows, I tried. Mind you, he never beat me at Scrabble, so fair’s fair. I knew about chess from reading “Alice Through The Looking Glass”, and I was desperate to learn how to play it. Here I have to pay tribute to my father. He saved his cigarette coupons and traded them in for a chess set. A family friend taught me the moves and the point of the game, but this was a bit of a waste since nobody else in the family could play.

I began playing against school friends and it didn’t take that long to convince me that this was not necessarily going to be my game. I’ve played sporadically since, but have never been much cop. So bear that in mind.

So let’s get down to Chess Masters – the Endgame. My first thought was that this was a bit of a rum old show. Now that the final has been and gone I see no reason to change this assessment. I mean, I’m not entirely sure who it was for. Yeah, there was a spark of interest in the game when “Queen’s Gambit” became an unexpected Netflix hit. But come on, that was five years ago! Have I learned much more about chess? Well, I already knew that it is a psychological game, a fact that all concerned with the show seemed desperate to ram home with monotonous regularity. I can’t see that it will have convinced many who don’t know much about the game, that it really is a great game – which it is. But somehow I can’t see it having had great appeal for those who love and understand the game either. In a nutshell:-

-        Although games were played in each show, you got to see very little of each.

-        As much time as was given to the games was also given to chess puzzles, used to eliminate some of the contenders. In case we might be tempted to try to work it out for ourselves Grand Master David Howells would explain the solution before even showing us the contenders giving it a go.

-        There was a ridiculous attempt to ‘sex – up’ the games. Each of our contestants was given a nickname – The Unruly Knight – The Chess Princess – Jet – Wolf (alright, those last two were really original gladiators.) Co-expert, Anthony Mathurin so relentlessly oversold every move that each contender made that you just wished someone would have chucked a bucket of water over him and told him to calm down.

-        It was presented by Sue Perkins – undoubtedly an intelligent and witty person, but she seemed to be in full frothy and light Bake-off mode.

I felt, to be honest, a bit patronised by the show. It seemed to me to say that we, the audience, do not possess the attention span to be able to take more than five minutes of actual chess at a time.

The sad thing is that a TV chess competition is not actually a terrible idea. But if you’re going to do it, then do one game per show, and credit the audience with having the attention span to follow it for 20 – 25 minutes.

The BBC has an admirable record of allowing a show a couple of series to find its audience, so Chess Masters: The Endgame might be back for a second series. Without major surgery to the format though I wouldn’t put money on it getting a third.