ethnic chess?
October 28, 2005 9:30 PM   Subscribe

ChessFilter: is it possible to tell someone's ethnic background by the way they play chess?

One of the characters in "Wolves Eat Dogs" by Martin Cruz Smith is a 12 year-old boy who's been living in a children's shelter in Moscow after being abandoned by his parents. He won't talk to anybody, so his family history is unknown, but he likes to play chess. At one point he plays one game with a Jewish man who announces that the kid plays extremely well, and by the way, he's Jewish. Is this plausible? Do Russian Jews play chess differently from other Russians? Could you see this in a single game? As far as we know, the kid has not been specially trained in chess, he's just an ordinary smart kid from Moscow.
posted by Quietgal to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (16 answers total)
 
No, people play according to their personality and level of skill. Any attempt to derive an ethnicity from a style of chessplay is ludicrous. There are chess openings with ethnic names (English opening, french defence, latvian gambit, etc.) but they are just a coincidence and any good player can play any opening.
posted by lpctstr; at 9:39 PM on October 28, 2005




My Russian buddy beats me at chess every time, if that means anything...
posted by Jon-o at 9:56 PM on October 28, 2005


I think it's more the author revealing something about the parochialism of the character: the chess playing Jew assumes that, since the kid plays extremely well, the kid is one of his own tribe.

Of course this sort of parochialism isn't limited to Jews, nor do I think Cruz Smith means to imply that. It's a prideful reaction familiar in any culture: "so-and-so does X well, so he must be my (more or less distant) kin", or the somewhat more pernicious "so-and-so is really good at something we (are commonly supposed to) do well at, so he must be one of us." (Compare variations on ethic humor -- "look at him drink, he must be a Murphy", "look at hum woo the ladies, he must be French".)

Cruz Smith may, however, be underscoring the strong ethnic identity (and Balkanization and suspicion of other ethnicities) that is supposed to be characteristic of Russia.
posted by orthogonality at 10:00 PM on October 28, 2005


<Eric Cartman> except, when the Jew plays chess, he's playing for his Jew Gold and world domination and control of Hollywood and the blood of Christian babies, Kyle.

posted by Eric Cartman at 9:00 PM CST on October 28 [!]
posted by orthogonality at 10:08 PM on October 28, 2005


From www.urbandictionary.com: Jewdar - The innate ability to detect Jewishness in another person. Like a sixth sense.

I'm Jewish. This is a real phenomenon. (Of course, as one might expect, it's not always accurate.)
posted by amro at 11:05 PM on October 28, 2005


I'm an atheist, but was raised in a (relaxed) Jewish home, and I'll vouch for the Jewdar ability. Not perfect, but amazingly close.
posted by davidmsc at 11:19 PM on October 28, 2005


It could easily be something else...a physical moment that the character notices, that the author wrote as a 'hint', but you didn't notice/know about.

For example, you bring the kid out a plate of milk and a ham sandwich while the game is playing...and all the silent kid does is eat the milk + bread...which is what he'd do if he was raised Kosher.

I don't think it's necessarily the Chess game...but the things around the chess game that the author might be leaving you clues.
posted by filmgeek at 4:46 AM on October 29, 2005


I think it's more the author revealing something about the parochialism of the character: the chess playing Jew assumes that, since the kid plays extremely well, the kid is one of his own tribe.

Bingo.

For example, you bring the kid out a plate of milk and a ham sandwich while the game is playing...and all the silent kid does is eat the milk + bread...which is what he'd do if he was raised Kosher.

Nobody who keeps kosher would eat bread that had been in contact with ham.
posted by languagehat at 6:30 AM on October 29, 2005


I doubt it's going to be something you notice from the move list of the game, and I think "you are good at chess you must be Jewish" as a sort of Jewish pride argument is playing it a bit high. It could be the kid's attitude towards the game: a detached interest, an impersonal manner of playing which anyone from a not-quite-loved minority group might acquire in a game that was a naked battle of skill.

In other words, it could be the way you play a strong move, with an "I'm sorry but you must admit you've lost" attitude versus a "there I got you—I rule!" smugness. In a child you might notice the struggle to replace the latter with the former.
posted by fleacircus at 8:13 AM on October 29, 2005


Dunno about chess, but in Go, there's enough variation in playing style that one is likely to pick up idiosyncrasies based on where one learns to play. I suspect a reasonably strong player could look at a game record and say, "Oh, black in this game is Korean and white is Japanese." Different internet Go servers tend to foster different styles as well.
posted by squidlarkin at 8:57 AM on October 29, 2005


It could be the kid's attitude towards the game: a detached interest, an impersonal manner of playing which anyone from a not-quite-loved minority group might acquire in a game that was a naked battle of skill.

But the kid was also abandoned by his parents and living in a shelter. That's got to have a pretty substantial effect on how he approaches interactions with other people, particularly adults. I would think any detachment, etc., would be a result of that experience, not because he comes from a historically oft-persecuted religion.
posted by amro at 9:07 AM on October 29, 2005


In the documentary film Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine Kasparov is thrown off by a move he is convinced was not played by Deep Blue. A computer should have taken his sacrifice. It was that thought, not the move itself, that hounded and eventually defeated Kasparov. I imagine he could identify many of his opponents blindfolded, particularly if he were willing to lose the matches by making diagnostic sacrifices. Perhaps he could identify someone's ethnic background by comparing their game to these identified opponents.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:34 AM on October 29, 2005


I haven't read the book, but from the way you describe the scene, it doesn't sound like the chess game has much if anything to do with the identification of the kid as Jewish. It could just as easily (and more likely) be that the kid looks Jewish.

That said, some aspects of how one plays chess may indicate that the player belongs to a certain school of thought (e.g. opening with the king's pawn is considered 'classic' and 'confrontational' vs. the queen's pawn opening, which is considered 'modern' and positional.' Some schools of thought may be more popular with some geographically related groups of people than in others, so why not ethnically-related people as well? If the book takes place in a time in which Jews in Russia don't tend to mingle too much with the gentiles, then it's quite possible that, within the Jewish Muscovite chess community, certain tactics are in vogue, and the fact that a kid is playing those moves might well be recognized by a gentile chessplayer who plays chess all around the city, with members of disparate ethnic communities.
posted by bingo at 2:16 PM on October 29, 2005


I'm with bingo. You'd probably be able to date when the players existed throughout history more than where they came from.

Modern players don't much open with the Guiocco Piano, and I doubt Steinitz used the King's Indian.
posted by NucleophilicAttack at 3:14 PM on October 29, 2005


If someone is playing a very complicated opening without thinking it's an indication that he/she has studied it in depth. You might be able to assume they went to a chess school, and possibly which one. Or maybe Jewish as opposed to Russian because he clearly did NOT go to a chess school.
posted by callmejay at 9:06 PM on October 31, 2005


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