Warren Elliott ... has been representing Jamaica in chess for years and has been a member of teams to three Chess Olympiads; in Russia (1998), Turkey (2000), and Slovenia (2002)

It is widely believed that chess is a game for intellectuals, scholars and even geniuses. But Jamaica's national champion, Warren Elliott, dismisses this, claiming that it is a game for everyone.

That it is also a game that can help average minds develop, may well be true.

"Research has shown that chess has improved people's intellect and academic achievements. It has also helped people in strategic planning in the world of work and so on," said Elliott who is a FIDE Master, a title bestowed by the world governing body of the sport.

"Some of these researches have shown that (for) students whohad bad grades, once they got involved in chess their grades improved," he added.

Elliott, who is a four-time national champion, told Sporting World that he was delighted with the progress that chess has made in Jamaica especially in the school system.

"There was a time when only the (children) of the high echelons of society would play chess, but now you have so many primary school children sitting down and playing chess. Yes, you still find that the majority of those who play are from prep schools and probably that is so because these schools may be in a better position to afford coaching and so on," explained the former Cornwall College student.
Even on street corners in ghettoes, he claims, the noble game is being played as its popularity spreads.

"I was surprised the other day when I went to Rollington Town and saw people in barber shops and on the street corners playing chess. I went to Portmore at a bar and saw people playing as well," Elliott said. "It is not a class thing anymore, everybody is playing."

Elliott, 25, is instrumental in helping to promote the sport in Jamaica as he is also a teacher and coach and the manager at one of the premier organisations involved in chess, the Five-Star Chess Academy.

"Locally we have pretty good coaches because now we have organisations that specialise in going into schools and coaching children. My organisation, Five-Star Chess Academy, has been going around promoting the sport," he said.

In the more recent past, women have begun to make a move on the men as more of them are catching the chess fever. "There is now a high interest coming from women... we are seeing a lot of all-girl schools now fielding teams in local tournaments and that's encouraging as in the past they stayed away," Elliott noted.
Deborah Richards, a Women's National Master, is the national female champion.
With the growing popularity of the sport, sponsors have turned and offered their hand, after having shied away.
"In the past the sport had not done so well in attracting sponsors, but recently a lot of sponsors have been coming on board. Maybe this is due to the new wave of popularity of the sport here in Jamaica plus the sport is getting more coverage in the media," Elliott said.
But while some corporate entities have warmed toward the sport, funding is still off the mark.

"Funding is certainly our biggest problem and if we don't have that then we won't be able to get chess sets to the schools, put on tournaments, trips overseas to get exposure, hire coaches and so on. Without funding we would not be able to do these things," Elliott said.

The local governing body for the sport, the Jamaica Chess Federation, is said to have been doing a "tremendous" job in keeping the sport alive despite the shortcomings.

"They have been doing a lot as they have now started a campaign to promote the sport in the western part of the island, so they have been spreading the game that was concentrated mostly in Kingston. They have also embarked on a major initiative to attract sponsorship and funding," said Elliott.

The FIDE (World Chess Federation) Master, who was defending his title as national champion at the recent 37th Jamaica National Chess Championship held at the Norman Manley Law School, recalled how difficult a tournament it was for him.

"I think this may be the strongest national championship ever with the top 12 players in the country competing, it was very tough especially because I was coming off a lay-off, so I was a little rusty, but my training partners Equitable Brown and Jomo Pitterson helped me to prepare," he said.

Each player had to play the 11 other contestants and at the end, points were tallied and the champion is decided. In that tournament, a 90-minute clock system was used requiring a player to make all his moves and win the game within that time.

Finishing behind Elliott in the last championship were top players Russell Porter (2nd), Shane Mathews (3rd), Jomo Pitterson (4th) and Dwayne Rowe (5th).

Elliott has been representing Jamaica in chess for years and has been a member of teams to three Chess Olympiads; in Russia (1998), Turkey (2000), and Slovenia (2002). "One time we finished in the 80s and low 100s. It was not good by world standards but very good in terms of how Jamaica has performed in these tournaments traditionally," he said. He has also been to tournaments in Venezuela and Barbados.

Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago are the top English-speaking Caribbean nations in chess, but Jamaica's closest neighbour, Cuba, are way ahead of everyone in the region with a number of Grand Masters and International Masters (the highest international levels).

Elliott is only one of two Jamaican players to have attained an international (FIDE Master) title. The other is Grantel Gibbs.

His short-term goal now is to go after the next international standard which is the International Master class. In chess there are four main titles: Grand Master, International Master, Fide Master and National Master.

Apart from that he will also try to equal or even better Shane Mathews' seven national titles.

Elliott has his sights set on his next move and that's going up the chess ladder, but where did the passion for the game start for this young man?He claimed it all began as a first former at Cornwall College back in 1991.

"My passion for the game all started when I was attending Cornwall College in Montego Bay. Some people had come into the school with a programme to teach chess and the bigger boys and a teacher named Mr Chin were teaching students that had just come in," he said.

He stuck with it because it offered him a challenge that few other games could. "I believe it is the challenge that chess provides that really got me to stay with it. Because everytime you overcome a challenge you face a new one," he said.

After just months at it, young Elliott was beating even those individuals who had introduced him to the game, and at that early stage, it was clear that a champion was brewing.

"After a couple of months I started beating everybody at school and then I went to play in a tournament called 'A Ladder' in Montego Bay and then I started to get beaten, so therefore I was challenged and had to be working harder at my game and to get better at it. After a time I started to beat those people," he smiled.

When he graduated from Cornwall College, a friend invited an eager and knowledge-hungry Elliott to Kingston to participate in a championship called the Jamaica Open and his fortunes changed for the better.

"...I decided to come just for some exposure and fun and to see what I could learn and it so happened that I won that tournament which had a lot of National Masters playing there," he said.

Elliott never looked back and won his first national title in 2000 and successfully defended it a year later. He won again in 2004 and 2005.

But what is chess?

Chess is a board game and mental sport for two players. It is played on a square board of eight rows called ranks and eight columns (called files), giving 64 squares of alternating colours, light and dark. Each player begins the game with 16 pieces that each move and capture other pieces on the board in a unique way. There are eight pawns, two knights, two bishops, two rooks, one queen and one king. One player controls light pieces and the other the dark pieces. The object of the game is to achieve checkmate. This occurs when a king is attacked and it cannot escape capture.

Chess is not a game of chance, it is based solely on tactics (short term) and strategy (long term). Nevertheless, the game is so complex that not even the best players can see all the possible moves.

The world champion is a Russian, Vladimir Kramnik, and the world number one ranked player is another Russian, Gary Kasparov. They are both Grand Masters.

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World