Mastering the Moves: Chess Players and their Career Stories
— An interview project planned and organized by FM Arthur Xu
Chess has been booming since the pandemic. The ancient game and sport, with a history spanning over a thousand years, is witnessing a remarkable resurgence. On December 31, 2022, chess.com had seven million active members in a single day for the first time. By January 20, 2023, the number of active members on chess.com had surged to an impressive ten million. People enjoy the mental challenges the game of chess offers. Chess has been found to contribute to cognitive development, boost concentration, and enhance problem-solving skills. Drawing from my experience as a chess player competing in tournaments for more than ten years, I’ve begun to ponder how chess is related to a person’s career choice and the enduring influence of chess-derived benefits on their careers. The interviews with the established chess players may illuminate the questions and help young chess enthusiasts envision their future careers.
Chess and Math: An Interview With GM Jonathan Mestel
By FM Arthur Xu
In March 2023, I ran into a math problem in an article from GM Jonathan Mestel. In July 2023, I had the opportunity to engage in a delightful conversation with him and talk about chess and math.
GM Jonathan Mestel is a Professor of Applied Mathematics at Imperial College London. GM Jonathan Mestel won the World Cadet Championship in 1974 and held the title of British Chess Champion in 1976, 1983, and 1988. He was awarded the Grandmaster (GM) title in 1982. Between 1976 and 1988, GM Jonathan Mestel was a member of the English Chess Olympiad team, winning three team medals (two silver and one bronze). He earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Trinity College, the University of Cambridge in 1982. In the interview, GM Jonathan Mestel shared his views on chess and how chess may have influenced his career as a mathematician.
GM Jonathan Mestel learned to play chess from his dad at about five or six years old and began playing chess seriously at 11. When discussing what lured him into chess, he mentioned that chess appealed to something about geometry.
GM Mestel: The pawns are really great. The fact that they give some sort of rigid structure to the position, and yet it’s not always rigid. Obviously, they can be blocked, but as the pawns move, they alter the position. So, that really works very well in my view. And en passant works, it’s important for that to work. The other thing which is a complete coincidence is that knights and bishops are almost the same. No one could predict that just by looking at the two pieces. It’s just we know from experience that they are. And that really makes a lot of very interesting interplay between when the knight is better than the bishop and vice versa.
Chess and mathematics seem to have some connections. In childhood, GM Mestel followed his academic career while concurrently engaging in chess competitions- a practice mirrored by many young chess players nowadays. While some of his contemporaries became full-time chess players and the younger players followed suit, he realized that it was challenging to maintain his position at the top of the British chess scene. In his days, he played one Interzonal Chess Tournament (a similar role replaced by the World Cup in 2005) in Las Palmas in 1982. He said he played the Interzonal well enough but did not go further. GM Mestel decided to begin his career as a professional mathematician after earning his doctoral degree in mathematics.
So, how did he think about the influences chess has on his mathematician career? He first pointed out that chess and math both require thought and visualization.
GM Mestel: There’s not a direct link. I mean, obviously there are some chess things which are very logical, and obviously logic and math and chess go together. But you know, I mentioned chess problems rather than chess playing. Chess problems
are really much more mathematical than chess playing, because in chess problems you have an idea and you can make it work. In a game you have an idea. Maybe it works, but probably it doesn’t. You know, you just live with that. Oh, it’s a nice idea. If you have an idea, you can compose a position such that it works. And so, you can get lots of beautiful things happening in chess problems and studies.
FM Xu: So, what are some things that you learned from chess that helped you in your life or your career?
GM Mestel: Not really, not really. I mean obviously people think, oh, you play chess, you must be very good at plotting and whatever, but they don’t seem to realize that in chess, of course, the rules are really clear. Yeah, you tend to be good at certain kinds of visualizations, that you can play in your head blindfold, some people just can’t understand at all how you could do it. But why shouldn’t you be able to, when you look at a position and think ahead, you’re essentially thinking and looking at a position that isn’t there.
FM Xu: Yeah, so that’s the other thing. Chess is a lot about patterns, right? Pattern recognition. That’s why, when you study chess, of course you look at thousands of games, thousands of positions, and that’s also how they teach computers to play chess and feed it millions of positions. And then it gets better and better because it learns from those positions and experiences. It’s kind of the same with math, right? You do a lot of math problems and start to see patterns.
At the end of the interview, GM Mestel offered some suggestions for young chess players who love chess and math and do them simultaneously. He suggested managing time in a reasonable, balanced way. He further shared his insights into decision-making and strategic thinking in chess that may affect a person’s math thinking.
GM Mestel: …you get used to thinking, making quick decisions sometimes. Yeah, that’s kind of the fun of chess sometimes too. And of course, in chess you have this dual approach. There’s the short-range tactics, there, there, there, I win. And then there’s this long term strategic (play), well this is a weak pawn, maybe if I can swap these rooks and I can build a bishop here and eventually I can do that. And that certain kind of math is a bit like that. You can prove things using logic. You can say for this, then that, then that, and then that’s like calculation. But then if I come up with a conjecture, you can sort of think that’s probably not true.
Last, as a mathematician, GM Mestel raised this chess-related math question at the end of the interview. Can you solve it?
You can mate with a bishop and a knight on an eight-by-eight board. Can you do it on a ten-by-ten board?
( Published on September 9th, 2023)
Chess, Growth and Community: An Interview With FM Christopher Shen
By FM Arthur Xu
Chess is a battle between two players on a board; however, many people do not know that chess is a bridge connecting people across regions, religions, identities, languages, cultures, and ages. Chess is a fantastic way to interact with people and make new friends. I was honored to have an opportunity to interview FM Christopher Shen on January 3rd, 2024. Chris, like many others, grew up with chess friends. Many wonderful people accompanied him on his learning and playing journey. This experience resonates with me. I do not remember when I became aware of Christopher Shen, but I am sure that we met at a chess tournament in the Midwest at least eight years ago. Meeting with and learning from various people through chess is a beautiful, unforgettable journey in a chess player’s life. I am happy to share what Chris thought about the impacts of chess on his career path.
FM Christopher Shen is a sophomore studying statistics and government at Harvard University. He received an IM norm by winning the 2019 Charlotte IM Fall Invitational. His chess achievements include finishing 2nd place in the U18 section at the 2019 Pan American Youth Championship in Guayaquil, Ecuador. In Summer 2019, he won the U.S. Junior Open, through which he earned a qualification for the U.S. Junior Championship in 2020. Over this winter break, Chris has organized a variety of tournaments and chess camps for young players in his Ohio hometown to advance and promote the game to children of all backgrounds.
Read the full interview report here.
The mindset and multiple perspectives: An interview with FM Vincent Tsay
By FM Arthur Xu
On March 10th, 2024, I interviewed FM Vincent Tsay, who co-founded Chess for Unity with me four years ago. FM Vincent Tsay is a freshman at Washington University in St Louis. He plans to embark on his career journey in the field of law. Vincent started learning chess at nine and won the gold medal in the U12 section at the World Cadet Chess Championship in 2017. He has earned three IM norms and hopes to reach the rating requirement soon for becoming an International Master.
Though I have known Vincent since 2016, we never talked about how he felt about chess and its impact on him. I was not surprised that he mentioned the focus and drive chess has taught him. However, I was impressed by his reflection on how chess has taught him to see things from multiple perspectives and take responsibility for his actions. At the end of the interview, I asked him to share his thoughts on chess education and what chess can bring to all students, especially those from under-resourced backgrounds in K-12 schools.
Read the full interview report here.