Chess is the ultimate battle of wits between two opponents battling to checkmate their foe’s king, and it’s a game adored by Rob Hammond and Adam Raoof.
Rob, who coaches chess through Chessville Coaching, grew up playing chess at school in South Africa, where the game is recognised as a sport. He moved to England seven years ago and was mostly inactive for 15 years until Covid-19 hit and the country was placed into lockdown.
Soon, Rob rekindled his love for the game as he played online against opponents from around the world.
He told Fen Regis Trophies: “During lockdown, you almost had this monkey mind with anxiety because you never knew what was going on.
“I found the only thing that would calm me was getting involved in a game of chess.
“In lockdown, it was very much online. Because I had been an auditor in South Africa, I brought that to the UK, and I ended up getting involved in different accounting championships and all sorts of online tournaments.”
Whereas Rob re-found his passion for the game, Adam has been a constant figure within the English chess community for decades. Adam has been organising tournaments through Chess England for more than 30 years and doesn’t plan on stopping any time soon.
“I’m 56 now, and I was 20 when I got involved in chess tournaments through Lucian Chess Club,” Adam said. “Lucian Chess Club contains some really well-known chess organisers, so I ended up working for some of the more well-known organisers
“As a result, I ended up organising my club’s annual rapid play six games in a day and that was the start of it all.
“Once I did that. It was like catnip; I was kind of hooked.”
Coaching Chess
Like any game or sport, chess can be coached and learning from a passionate and dedicated coach will always help any newcomer to fall in love with their activity. Rob is as passionate as any coach and truly believes that all children should be afforded the opportunity of playing chess.
“Chess definitely helps in terms of your problem solving and your general logic,” Rob said. “I found that it has been a big help from working with a lot of ADHD children.
“Both of my children are home-schooled, so we’re tapped into a lot of home-school networks. As a result, you find all sorts of children…you have lots of children that have problems working within a very structured school environment.
“Working with children with ADHD, I have found it absolutely incredible how you assume that there will be this contrast between them sitting still and concentrating on a game.
“Because there’s this battle that’s waging on the board, they’re actually able to focus completely on it. They are able to channel that nervous or stressed-out energy on the chessboard.”
With the advancement of technology, mixed with the need for us all to find something to occupy ourselves during lockdown, Rob revealed that a lot of newcomers were unaware that chess is a board game, having played exclusively online.
“One of the key takeaways we noticed with the juniors that have started playing in tournaments after lockdown are shocked and surprised and think it’s incredible to find out that chess is also available as a board game!
“They’ve actually learned and grown up and been introduced to chess electronically via social media. Everything is electronic.
“They didn’t realise that it stemmed from a board game, so that has been one of the key takeaways in terms of the juniors and what they are recognising.”
While playing online has become more commonplace, Rob believes that there is nothing like playing chess face-to-face with your opponent on the board.
“You have to adjust your mindset because, playing over the board, there is a difference in terms of your 3D configuration of what you are able to see and spot on the board.
“I encourage my students, even though we are learning online, to set up a board as much as possible so that they can see the game in a 3D content and develop that 3D vision of the board.”
Chess England
While Rob focuses much of his time on coaching the next generation of chess players, Adam is busy organising tournaments and the two have worked together on a number of occasions, owing to the tight-knit community that chess is. Adam has been playing chess for 50 years, having been taught by his father at the tender age of six years old while growing up in South London.
Having won his local tournament at Hendon Chess Club on numerous occasions, taking great pleasure in seeing his name engraved on his club’s trophy, Adam takes just as much pride in organising and providing tournaments where players of all abilities can come together. That is why he set up and registered Chess England in 2019.
“I was doing what I was doing anywhere else, just organising tournaments for people every weekend and sometimes during the week,” Adam said.
“I just needed an official company name and this website happened to be available, so I registered that, and then I registered the limited company.
“Chess England is not an official body, it’s my private enterprise, but I do a lot of tournaments under that umbrella.
“I do a lot of tournaments where I’m working with people like Rob Hammond, who does Chessville, and I’m working with lots of other people who are like me, doing tournaments in their own area, but I stick them all on my calendar.
“I’m always very careful to tell people that the official chess calendar is the English Chess Federation.”
Whereas Rob is active in the online chess community, Adam admits to being a little more old-school in preferring the face-to-face intricacies of the game.
“I think I’m the wrong generation to talk about,” he admitted. “For me, it (face-to-face chess) is the traditional way you play and there wasn’t any other way to play it.
“All chess programmes when I was a kid were hopeless. They became very strong very quickly, but they were hopeless.
“Nowadays, a lot of the people who are playing chess and making a living aren’t necessarily the strongest players. What they’re doing is playing chess online and streaming it, and they make a living doing that.
“That’s something that’s completely new to me. I’ve done it, but I realise I lack certain skills to do that.
“I know my place in the chess world. I’m an organiser; I like to get bums on seats. I like people to play chess.
“I have done large online tournaments, but it doesn’t have the same kind of buzz. I like face-to-face contact. I like the social element.
“I was quite shy when I was a kid and chess allowed me to meet other people. It was kind of a controlled environment where if I didn’t want to talk to anybody, I didn’t have to and if I did, I could find a way of talking to them, because I could talk about chess.
“I find that, even now, I meet more people through chess than I do anything else. Not just because I do that pretty much every weekend, it’s just that we have that in common.
“They’re my kind of people and I enjoy talking about the game with them.”
Whether you are a grandmaster or have never picked up a chess piece before, there is a game for anyone – and it’s likely that either Rob Hammond or Adam Raoof will have been involved in one way or another.
By Aaron Gratton
Exactly like I am. Playing chess over the board face to face is the best. I play online as well BUT I like the classic way of the game much much more.