A hundred boys and girls from 8 to 16 years old, Norwegian and Spanish, very concentrated for four hours, constantly debating to choose the best move. And what they handled were not electronic devices but giant chess pieces, made with recycled tires by the Leon company RMD, as well as the floor board where they move. It’s the Little Giants tournament, exported to Bjergsted Park in Stavanger (Norway) after its success in recent years in León and other Spanish cities. On the rest day of the elite Norway Chess tournament, its organizers opted for ecological and educational chess.
“In the times we live in, this is especially beautiful and inspiring. “Such young people acting as a team and totally focused on a specific task,” Benedicte Westre Skog, general director of Norway Chess, the organizing company of one of the most important and innovative professional tournaments in the world, told EL PAÍS every year since 2013.
But this Friday the gladiators on the board were resting after four very tough first rounds, and the national hero Magnus Carlsen was taking a boat trip with his family in a country where days of splendid sunshine are a source of great collective joy. So the prominence of chess wimbledon -as Gari Kasparov baptized it once the Linares (Jaén) tournament had disappeared, which deserved that honorary distinction for many years- passed to the Little Giants, an idea that Westre Skog and his team have imported to Norway after being eyewitnesses of its success in Spain (León, Zamora, Oviedo, Valladolid and Santander).
They are teams of four (and two substitutes) that play in permanent consultation and with a clock (15 minutes per side for each game plus a ten-second increment after each play). Mothers, fathers, teachers, companions, referees and spectators limit themselves to observing, cheering between games and applauding when they finish (even after defeats) without writing down plays or strategic plans at any time.
The Agustinos de León school has been invited to the tournament in Norway as the winner in Spain, and the Norwegian school Giske, winner this Friday, will be in the 2024 final in León on November 23. Of course, the cultural differences are noticeable: the Little Giants tournaments in Spain are held with happy, loud background music; In Stavanger they also started with music, but it had to be removed because some Norwegian players argued that they could not concentrate.
A striking aspect was the shortage of girls. Of the 24 participating teams, only one, Skeie, was entirely female, and among all the others there were barely a dozen (only one in Agustinos). Norway and the other Scandinavian countries are among the most advanced in the world in terms of gender equality, but it is no less true that among their students in university courses related to mathematics there are many more men than women. Westre Skog sees “a clear connection between both facts”, and emphasizes: “In addition, I think that in Norway there are few female chess players despite how advanced we are in equality.”
In addition to agreeing – together with Ireland – in the recognition of Palestine, Norway and Spain launched a message this Friday from a park in Stavanger that is the antithesis of those groups of teenagers gathered with their cell phones in their hands and without speaking to each other. Alberto Martínez Fernández, 13 years old, one of the players on the Agustinos team, sums it up: “Today I have been able to see that chess connects you very well with people from other cultures; “We don’t know Norwegian, but we had a great time with the Norwegian kids.” And he concludes: “Plus, these tournaments show that thinking can be a lot of fun.”
to weekly newsletter ‘Wonderful play’, by Leontxo García
