By Danilo P. Padua, PhD

The result of the recently concluded ASEAN age group chess championships held in Pahang, Malaysia last Nov., 2017once more displays the innate talent and love of Filipinos of the royal game of chess. The young Filipino woodpushers brought home 38 golds, 37 silvers, 29 bronzes to literally run away with the championship. It is the first time in 18 editions of the event that the country won the overall title.
The championship is like a welcome rain on a parched land. We were considered the king of Asian chess long before China and India became world powers as they are today. We had the first Asian grandmaster in the person of GM Eugene Torre, we produced a lot of Asian Junior chess champions before the two mentioned powerhouses came along. We produced the first Asian junior to defeat a Russian GM.
And of course we had Mr. Florencio Campomanes who became a very influential president of the governing world chess body, the International Chess Federation known by its French acronym, FIDE. Campomanes is a very close friend of the Bautistas of the University of Baguio. His influence led to the spread of the game to many non-traditional chess-playing countries, many of which are now organizing a lot of important world chess competitions and events. Because of him also, chess became even more rooted in the country.
Sadly, we sat on such laurels as if there are no more changes the following day. No thanks to politicians who lord it over the local federation overseeing the game.
Abroad, those who became successful stewards of their national chess federations built on those accomplishments to become politicians and get elected. Here you have to be a politician to become a head of a sports body, but the result is destruction of that sports body! Why, they have no compelling motive to succeed but only to have their name constantly in the news. While they are at it, they sow terror among the athletes, browbeating them when they will not kowtow to their sometimes unjustifiable, unmindful wishes. Despite that, somehow the Philippines is still acknowledged as a little force in the international chess firmament. Why so? This will be covered here in the near future.
This piece however is dedicated more on the role of chess in the development of school kids. I have written here before, at least twice, that chess should be given importance in the Cordillera (as well as in all other regions in the country).Chess, as a matter of fact, had long been a part of the school curriculum in Russia and other countries formerly in federation with it. Now it is also a part of curriculums in many European countries such as Spain, England and Germany. In Asia, it is China, India, and to a lesser extent, Vietnam which had already put chess in place in their respective curriculums. It is no wonder that the first two are among the top 5 chess powers in the world today while Vietnam has now supplanted the Philippines as the kingpin of the game in South East Asia.
Several studies abroad have shown “that chess can help develop critical thinking that can be used in other areas of a child’s life. For example, test scores improved by 17.3% for students regularly engaged in chess classes, compared with only 4.6% for children participating in other forms of enriched activities”. This was a finding in America.
It is now abundantly clear that the game of chess teaches many important life skills such as patience, strategy, logic and concentration. According to a Chess Foundation in the U.S, chess can also help students by improving spatial abilities, high-order thinking skills, visual memory, attention span, prediction, critical thinking, and problem solving. Taking this cue, many schools in the U.S, especially in the junior high, are now incorporating chess playing as part of students’ activities. This makes students get together to exercise their brains while having fun.
Actually, chess-playing was found to have resulted in exceeded expectations from students!
Based on her actual experiences, a famous woman world champion chess player, coach and advocate of chess promotion, strongly believe that playing chess helps students and other people in their critical and logical thinking, ability to solve problems, calculation and decision making, discipline, imagination and creativity. She could not have put it better.
I, myself, can attest to the effect of chess on the performance of student chess players. I have been a long-time varsity chess coach, albeit on-and-off, qualifying some of my teams to the national competitions in the Philippine Association of State Universities and Colleges (PASUC) national games. Many of my players had performed well academically, and also fared well after graduation.
With all the above research results and actual experiences, why not make chess a real part of curriculums for elementary and high school in CAR? Baguio city for one, had already produced a grandmaster-elect in the person of Haridas Pascua, a product of U.B. There are upcoming young and talented chessplayers from the city who are now representing the country in age group chess competitions. The city have also produced masters, including women. And there are a lot of very strong young chess talents from all over the Cordillera region that I have seen playing.
Chess could also be an antidote to the drug menace. Why not indeed, chess for CAR?