Hi All,
To bring everyone up-to-date, below you will find my response to Janelle and
Judit when they posed to me the question shown in the subjectline. Below that
response I will include the questions Judit sent back to me with my replies. I
appollogize for the length of my original response, but I trust most will find
my remarks at least reasonably relevant.
Text begins----------
Hi Judit, Janelle,
Nice to e-meet you as well. Having just returned from a major tournament, some
210 players, and having encountered some pleasant innovations, your question is
both interesting and challenging.
I’ve played mainstream tournaments, as well as the USBCA National Blind, off
and on since the mid-70’s. Since I rejoined the chess world in 2014, I have
played in four mainstream tournaments. I have also, coincidentally, played in
four—do I say—blind tournaments? This last gmainstream tournament offered a
very nice innovation. One of the questions on the registration form was: Would
I like my pairings texted and/or emailed to me? There are a number of blind
people who do not yet use smartphones. I’m not one of them. I checked both text
and email, though the text bit was the one I was happiest with. Oddly enough,
obtaining my pairing used to be one of the more intimidating aspects of
tournament participation.
Chessplayers aren’t especially known for their courtesy, especially when
dashing about just before the start of a round. As a matter of fact, I had my
cane snapped in half at this very tournament. That was another first. Yet
another first, I must add, was the fact that the lady who snapped it actually
came and insisted on paying for the cane. That was indeed a first at any venue.
But I digress. The fact that I was able to get my pairing via text meant that I
didn’t have to deal with much of the hubbub associated with the start of a
round. The decaning event occurred as I was turning to go into the playing
room. This lady clearly was not looking where she was going except to try to
shoot in front of me. Probably cuts people off on the freeway, too! But she was
apologetic about it. Again, I digress!
The texting of the pairing info invites a question. Is this now standard fare.
As I said, it was a first for me. The tournament was run by the Continental
Chess Association. They are a large, active organization. Would the same
service be offered at a smaller tournament, run perhaps by a local individual?
Will the texting service, in any venue, come to include the ratings of the
paired players? In this particular case, the text identified the section,
round, assigned color, last name, first name, MI if available, and board
number. I still had to ask my opponent what rating was posted.
I suppose I should have started with a list of the details with which I will
have to concern myself. Bear in mind that this list will be somewhat different
for someone who has, for example, usable vision. Getting to the playing room;
getting to the bathroom during the game in as short a time as possible; getting
the time read off the clock; making sure the result gets posted—especially if I
win! Making sure the positions on the two boards are in sync.
There have been a couple of innovations at these most recent tournaments. In
the old days, I carried a wind-up, analog braille chess clock. These days, with
delay or increment issues, my old analog clock is essentially useless. Thus
far, though, I have had zero occurrences of an opponent being unwilling to read
the time off the clock. Of course I only ask for it during my own move. And I
have had no occasion where I felt my opponent was not being honest.
Communicating moves has not been an issue. I am versed in both descriptive and
algebraic notation systems. I was mildly amused, at this last tournament, to
encounter two different players who didn’t set their board up correctly, using
a board with the algebraic identifiers printed on it and still setting the
board so that the black pieces were on ranks 1 and 2—that sort of thing. But a
bit of patience and communication resolved that.
At the tournaments run by the CA, I was rather tickled to be placed in a
separate room with my opponent. By the end of the tournament, there would be
more boards set up in that room than just ours, but it was frankly pleasant not
to be in the room with 40 or more other boards. A heck of a lot easier to
navigate to the door for bathroom trips as well.
The CCA-run tournaments have been big, two- to three-hundred or more players.
Navigating the crowd has been the biggest challenge. Unfortunately, Bowling
Green, Kentucky, is not a hotbed of chess activity. There just aren’t many
small tournaments to visit. I’m hoping that in the coming months I may be able
to make some contacts to get to some small tournaments in Tennessee. That will
give me some comparisons, although, honestly, there weren’t that many obstacles
back when I was playing the smaller quads and club tournaments. Perhaps my
biggest irritation, back then, was that it sometimes occurred that a player had
to be repeatedly reminded to state his move before hitting his clock. Even
that, though, did not occur at every tournament, and it has not been an issue
over the last four years.
Incidentally, having played over a hundred tournaments. Last year, at the
Mid-America Open in St. Louis, I encountered for the first time another blind
player. That was the first time—in all those tournaments. It occurred to me,
briefly, to wonder if the TD might want to pair us. He didn’t. And, actually,
Henry dropped out of the tournament after the second round, after losing to
young teen agers twice. I’ve been having the same experience, but it hasn’t
made me drop out of a competition. Which brings me to what might be the real
crux of this whole subject: Even with internet access, it is very challenging
to access the latest innovations, make use of the chess engines. Shredder works
extremely well. But Fritz much less so, and Stockfish not at all. Neither
screenreaders nor voiceover will work on <http://chess.com/> chess.com.
Chess365 is somewhat accessible, but it could definitely use some improvements.
So, attending the tournaments is less the problem than is accessing the latest
literature to be able to keep up with sighted players. If we as an organization
could make some inroads in that arena, it could make a key difference.
I’ll stop for now and see what questions, observations you have.
Questions from Judit with replies interspersed-------
To answer some of the questions:
- texting and/or emailing pairing will be a long way to go. even us at
BayAreaChess are just working on it to make it accessible for bigger
tournaments. certainly not the smaller ones.
- navigating thru crowd: just wondering as a naive person: would a volunteer
help in these cases? basically have someone you can tap their shoulders and
they can walk you wherever you need to go? or is that more work than the
original trouble?
Two considerations here… To my knowledge, any blind person is eligible to bring
along to a tournament an assistant, frequently referred to as a “Second.” This
second can make a record of the moves of the game, can punch the clock for the
blind player, can make the opponent moves on both the standard and also the
adaptive board. Having never used a second, I confess I don’t know whether the
moves are spoken--I would assume so, but I don’t know. That seconde can also
assist the blind player with any navigation issues. The blind player can bring
this assistant to the tournament, or he or she can approach the TD regarding
availability of a second. Only twice in my tournament career have I been
approached by the TD and asked if I would like a second. In both cases, I
declined the services as far as making and recording the moves, hitting the
clock, etc. But I was able to take advantage of the sighted guide services.
Worth noting, perhaps, at the Indianapolis Open in 2017, while no conversation
took place between myself and the TD regarding the use of a second, I did
observe that the same individual frequently collected me on my way out of the
playing room during bathroom breaks. Prearranged? Or just a Kind Samaritan? No
idea. But much appreciated!
- blind chess player community: do you know any forums? online forums where you
can exchange experiences, ideas, etc..
This List is certainly proving to be one. Other Lists, ftp-chess, skype_chess,
tournoiSkype, blind-chess can certainly also serve as such. Anywhere blind
players gather to play chess, conversations and experiences are bound to get
shared. Certainly, once my Chess Gather resumes, hopefully in the
not-too-distant future, it will serve as such. I do think we need to make much
better use of the Ezines, talk shows, and the like. It’s just a matter of time
and scheduling.
- articles: I’m very much interested in this, to find ways to make the articles
accessible to you guys. I’m sure i can organize a set of volunteers who can
audio tape some of the chess life and other magazines or other articles. let me
ask around and start working on this, because this is the most easiest for me
to work on and get some results for you!! what would be the first resource that
you want to listen to? Chess life magazine? how can we solve the certain
settings when board is shown? any suggestions?
This question is simpler and yet trickier than it might seem at first glance.
Indeed, the USBCA was at least reputed at one time to have a small library of
books available for loan. Back in the 70’s, former member Gintas Burba had a
source of books that one could purchase from him. I bought a few. They were on
cassette tape. I’ve asked a couple times but haven’t found anything definitive
on whether we still have any books for loan. In thinking over this question
over the last few days, I am inclined to think that maybe we could work with
NLSBard. The thing is, if I get a book or article that I really like, I am
disinclined to part with it. Even though I might not look at it for a year, I’m
just stodgy enough to want to know that it is on my shelf, should I want it.
The advantage of NLSBard is that it takes only a minute to download something
from them. There is no space concern, which there would be if we used something
like Dropbox. So a packrat like me doesn’t feel that something is too far out
of reach since I can grab my IPhone and download with no muss or fuss. As to
how one describes a position, short algebraic notation is the most
straightforward. Incidentally, once upon a time, some folks in Jeffrey turner’s
Python group were working on trying to write a python program that would
convert a picture of a chess position into a Forsyth diagram or a short
algebraic description. I haven’t heard anything of that for the last year or
so; maybe somebody else knows something? I will say this. It seems to me that,
rather than spin up a lot of time and effort putting things which are already
online into accessible format, maybe somehow we could bring pressure on the
folks managing the websites to make their materials accessible. Maybe, if more
of us made it known that we would like to use Fritz, or Stockfish, or any of
these other engines and databases, maybe we could mount a bit of pressure to
get the creators to comply with Accessibility standards. Seems like that would
be preferable to creating a whole taskforce of folks reinventing the wheel, so
to speak. But are we a big enough market? Could we get that organized? To date,
we don’t even have a comprehensive list of blind players actively playing
tournaments or studying chess.
Best to everybody,
Jim T
