Photograph: Kamil Zihnioglu/Guardianįostering individual flexibility like this makes for hardier players than the academic approach. Theory might say there’s a best move, but if they want to make a good move somewhere else, that’s enough because they will be playing their way.”Ī boy contemplates his next move. With us, it’s the reverse: we play with the child first, look at their style, and the moves they want to make.

“Which is to say: the grandmasters played like this, so you learn the variations by heart and play like that. “There’s the classic method of learning,” he says. This is the Corsican style, says Vilaisarn, favouring improvisational tactics over strategy. In the 14- to 16-year-old category, where many of the players are in the 12-strong school of excellence, all the matches quickly become cagey affairs, with tense ructions over every piece taken. The league’s employees and volunteers circulate, scoping out the unfolding games most came up through the programme themselves. The rhythmic clatter of plastic pieces commences. On the wall is a painting of a white tiger mauling a chessboard a tribute to the former world champion Viswanathan Anand, the “tiger of Madras”, who has visited the club.īack inside the competition space for the next round, Vilaisarn, 49, tells everyone to pipe down, in French and Corsican.

Marc’Andria’s mother, Lucie, is behind the bar serving slices of pizza, while Fares, seven, tells me: “I like chess because you have the pawn and the king, just like in real life.” Children and adults intermingle freely weaker players are encouraged to take on stronger ones. But it’s true to the democratic ethos of i scacchi (chess) here, a riposte to the often elitist reputation of the sport (as the International Olympic Committee has classified it since 1999). It may be bedlam outside the game zone for this qualifying round of the Corsican youth championships. Akkhavanh Vilaisarn watches a game during the Corse Trophées tournament in Bastia, Corsica.

The island of a thousand mirrors