

Why are the Russians so good at chess? - edw519
http://www.slate.com/id/2229515/

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varjag
The article is correct. It's the same attitude that with any form of
competition that was deemed a matter of national prestige in USSR: popularized
by state throughout all outlets, industrialized through a ranks of special
schools and training facilities, and usually devoid of fun that was initially
behind the whole thing.

You'd have same approach with sports, ballet, or even high-school level
contests in natural science. If there'd existed a world-renowned competition
in crosswords, rest assured USSR would have had a nation-wide network of
crosswording schools that would've enlisted talented kids at age of 5, three
state-approved categories of crossword-manship (and one for juniors) and
crossword solving discretely featured in every third motion picture.

But I digress. If you ever got to being a candidate for, say, a national
senior-school physics competition, you'd be transferred to region's best
teachers. They would train you like a circus dog, showing you the tricks and
running you through hundreds of assignments encountered in previous years,
with no focus on the essence of physics. Granted you'd know a lot about
pulleys and levers and displacement, but it wouldn't make you any good
physicist.

~~~
catzaa
> If you ever got to being a candidate for, say, a national senior-school
> physics competition, you'd be transferred to region's best teachers.

This is not a bad thing. It is completely the opposite to some Western ideals
to ensure that everyone gets the same (bad) education. I think that the motto
for a lot of guys on the left is that if everyone is kept behind no-one loses.

What is incredibly interesting to note is that Russia and several eastern bloc
countries perform better than the USA in math (school age – according to OECD
TIMMS test). Cf.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trends_in_International_Mathema...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trends_in_International_Mathematics_and_Science_Study)

This is quite shocking since the USA spends a lot more on education and is a
few times richer.

> Granted you'd know a lot about pulleys and levers and displacement, but it
> wouldn't make you any good physicist.

In all fairness, the USSR did produce quite a few excellent physicists. Per
capita it probably outranks the USA for Nobel Prize winners in Physics.

~~~
varjag
> It is completely the opposite to some Western ideals to ensure that everyone
> gets the same (bad) education.

School education is not a good predictor of future performance. I would
venture to say that above some (fairly modest) threshold of quality, the
difference in schooling is irrelevant.

> What is incredibly interesting to note is that Russia and several eastern
> bloc countries perform better than the USA in math (school age – according
> to OECD TIMMS test).

This is not what made the great Russian mathematicians though. You don't get
feynmanns and turings by locking up kids to solve monotonous puzzles.

> In all fairness, the USSR did produce quite a few excellent physicists. Per
> capita it probably outranks the USA for Nobel Prize winners in Physics.

Of course it doesn't. Even the UK is way ahead of USSR on that metric.

There were plenty of great Soviet physicists and champions in other sciences,
but bear in mind that at least half of them were product of pre-Soviet,
imperial school system.

~~~
catzaa
> School education is not a good predictor of future performance. I would
> venture to say that above some (fairly modest) threshold of quality, the
> difference in schooling is irrelevant.

I beg to differ. School performance in mathematics and science directly
impacts on the careers of people. A good example is engineering – it is pretty
difficult for someone to study engineering without a good and solid
mathematical foundation.

> Of course it doesn't. Even the UK is way ahead of USSR on that metric.

The UK and the USA is per capita twice to three times as rich as Russia/USSR.
Britain also has the advantage of drawing out all of the brains out of the
Commonwealth. A large percentage of American PhDs came from Europe (either
Jews who fled or Germans who came afterwards). A lot of them were not educated
in the USA.

I would venture that the Soviet Union/Russia’s scientific accomplishments is
pretty spectacular for when all is taken into account.

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ig1
It's a nice story but it's wrong, Russia has had a strong reputation in Chess
since the 1700s several hundred years before Krylenko's chess schools.

Merim Bilalić's team did an extensive study that was published by the Royal
Society to find out why there are so few strong female chess players. Their
study concluded it was purely statistics, less female players overall meant
that there were less female outliers (i.e great players).

I imagine something similar is at play here.

~~~
pfedor
I used to play chess a little as a kid and what I know is in more agreement
with the article than with what you say. Prior to the Soviet chess explosion
there used to be great Russian players (Chigorin, Petrov) but also many great
players from other countries (Philidor, Anderssen, Morphy, Zukertort.) If you
look at the official list of world champions, there was only one Russian
champion (Alekhine) before 1948 and only one non-Soviet champion between 1948
and the collapse of the Soviet Union (Bobby Fischer, and I read he learned
Russian to have access to first-class chess literature.)

In the SU the chess players enjoyed privileges unavailable to the general
population, e.g., they could travel abroad (at least as long as they were
winning, I read that Taimanov had his passport confiscated after losing to
Fischer in the Candidates Match.) They also were favored at the higher
education institutions, i.e., as a successful chess player you didn't have to
study much to pass and get a degree.

As an aside, I heard from a guy who knew David Bronstein personally that
Bronstein could have easily won the World Championship from Botvinnik in 1951,
but it was made clear to him that it was considered undesirable for a Jewish
player to beat Botvinnik. Bronstein according to my friend was a broken man
after that, became excessively extravagant and never played with the same
strength again.

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cema
You say: "it was considered undesirable for a Jewish player to beat
Botvinnik". What, Botvinnik was not Jewish? That's news to me. I am sure there
may have been some pressure, perhaps a lot of pressure, but Jewishness is
unlikely to have played a role.

~~~
pfedor
He was? That's news to me but you well may be right. I could have confused the
details it's been a while. I remember there was a game in that match which was
interrupted till the next day (they used to do it after I believe 40 moves) at
the endgame stage and Bronstein made an elementary mistake the next day.
Anything's possible but it's hard to believe that a player at this level would
have made such mistake after having the whole day to analyze the position.

~~~
joe_the_user
Just with pure Wikipedia-ing... Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik was an
assimilated Jew. Bronstein might have seemed "more Jewish" for all I know and
so not have been considered desirable.

Also, terrible mistakes aren't unheard of in this level of play - I remember
an account of the Karpov/Korchnoi match mentioning a few. The pressure in such
a high level match is intense. Remember, no one has a day to analyze their
next move. One player seals their move and it isn't revealed till the next
day. True, they each get to think about the position in general but that's
harder.

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chaosmachine
It's not a mystery. Why is country X good at Y? Because Y is popular and has
better support/infrastructure there.

~~~
pixcavator
My guess is that soccer received more support than chess in the Soviet Union,
but the results weren't impressive at all.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Hypothesis: Your country's likelihood of fielding a world-class soccer team is
roughly proportional to the number of person-days of access that the average
kid has to an unfrozen soccer field.

Isn't this like asking why US colleges north of, say, Virginia have so much
trouble recruiting top-class college baseball players, such that the College
World Series always seems to be "some team from Florida vs some team from
Arizona"? Aspiring players of professional baseball prefer to play for teams
whose home field thaws out before April.

Of course, the opposite is also true. Great hockey players are more likely to
be hail from Russia, Canada, New York, or Massachusetts than from Brazil,
Italy, London, or California.

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akrymski
Chess has always been very popular in Russia, I struggle to think of anybody I
met there who doesn't know how to play.

Having said that, mathematics is also taught a lot more than in Europe or USA.
When I moved from a Russian school to a European one, math teachers would give
me homework that was 3 grades ahead of me. And even then it was English that
caused issues more than anything =)

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Anaid9
Because chess is so much more popular there. Here the emphasis is on money-
making activities, such as sports- that have rules that can be easily
understood by the large masses, and that are easier to market. In
addition,there is much more support for chess there, and chess is highly
admired; here there are a lot of mixed opinions and myths about chess - for
example, that in order to be a good chess player you have to be intelligent,
chess is for nerds, etc. Now that chess is finally entering the US and
increasing in popularity, hopefully it will be much better understood and
appreciated in the future, but it may take a long time before it becomes
really popular here.

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newsdog
I haven't read the article yet, so I'll guess at it's contents then check it
to see how well I did.

TRAGAC because they teach every kid the country chess in school - identify the
gifted - send them to chess camp - identify the more gifted - send them to
chess school - keep filtering - concentrate the best of the best into more and
more intense training - Botvinnik ran a chess school at the very top that
trained both Kasparov, Karpov and Krammnik.

Make sure the talented get their 10,000 hours in with no distractions, like
having to have a job.

Easy, peasy.

~~~
newsdog
O,k I read it. It DID have some mention of the state support system, but said
it was for more ideological reasons.

Ayn Rand wrote an essay on WTRAGAC and she pointed out chess was a very
CAPITALISTIC game. Why?

In chess, you own all your own pieces. Just about the only private property in
the USSR. No Central Committee or Five Year Plan can tell you how to place
your rook. At no time will your rook ever be nationalized by the state just
when you need it the most.

Second, only you get to push your pieces. It is NOT collectivized.

Third, you are rewarded for being strong in a non socialist manner. You and
the other guy start out with the same number of pieces, soon the stronger
player has more. They don't NEED more, being stronger, but, as in life in the
West, the rich get richer!

Rand argued that the TRAGAC because they used it to escape an unnatural
Socialist system.

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yannis

      Exceptional Ability = Practice + Availability of Time
                                       for Practice
                                     + Motivation

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jcapote
Probably the same reason they are amazing programmers

~~~
AlexTheFounder
And scientists. The reason I think is in the traditionally more system-
oriented education.

~~~
dzlobin
And a very advanced education system where calculus and physics are taught in
5th and 6th grade

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osipov
BS. i took 5th, 6th grade in Soviet Union. we had no calculus and purely
conceptual, primarily arithmetic oriented physics.

~~~
borism
dunno about 5th and 6th grades, but yes, physics and calculus are definitely
introduced in middle school (junior high for our american friends).

~~~
osipov
physics in 5th grade,an equivalent of American precalculus in 9th grade and
calculus in 10th grade

------
known
"You are a product of your environment." --Clement Stone

~~~
teeja
Exactly. As the movie "Looking for Bobby Fischer" made clear, we in the US
live in a non-chess culture. Like mathematicians, chess players and honor-roll
students in high-school are ignored while jocks get lots of attention.

Belonging to a subculture can be empowering for people who aren't world-class
out of the gate like Bobby, but that's only available for a very small
minority in cities. Elsewhere, there's little heavy competition or opportunity
to evolve.

The US gets it's ass handed to it in international math competitions because
math, as with most intellectual endeavors in the US, gets no respect. The news
proves everyday that 2/3's of us are clueless about most things that developed
in the 20th century.

~~~
known
I think <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs> also
plays a good role in producing good chess players.

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wsprague
Let me echo what some people are saying .... training and education. Duh.

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amichail
If someone is smart enough to play chess at the highest levels, wouldn't
he/she be better off as a mathematician?

~~~
tomjen2
Not really, a mathematician would likely make less money than a toplevel chess
player.

~~~
slackenerny
According to James Simons, _"The average annual income of leading research
mathematicians (those, say, with at least three articles in the Annals of
Mathematics) is about 10,000,000 USD"_ ;]

~~~
nearestneighbor
I'm skeptical of that. There is one web site (besides the above comment) that
has this quote. It links to the Wikipedia article about James Simons as its
source. The Wikipedia article does not seem to mention the quote. Even if
James Simons did say that, I'd like to see _his_ source.

 _Edit_ : it just occurred to me that, since we are talking about "average"
and not "median", this may as well be true, if a handful of mathematicians
make a gazillion dollars a year. Very senior faculty members in the top
research universities in the US are likely to make only $200-500k per year.

~~~
mquander
"Only," but that's ten times what a professional chessplayer outside of the
top 10 in the world makes.

