Mohamed Tissir rose quickly to his feet as a visitor entered the Bahrain Chess Academy.
“We’ll have to talk outside,” he said, in a hushed tone, gesturing toward some tables where eight different pairs of young girls and women stared at their respective chess boards. “They’re playing a tournament.”
Tissir, the founder and director of the academy, led the way to a makeshift seating arrangement outside. “Chess has become very popular with young girls and women recently,” he said, smilingly. “All because of the Netflix TV series, The Queen’s Gambit.”
The popular, multiple-award winning series is about a fictional American teenage chess prodigy playing in the 1950s and ’60s. The title refers to one of the oldest opening moves in chess.
As he spoke, mellow music from a busy café nearby drifted across the open ground at the Andalus Gardens, a specially designed recreational space in Manama, where Tissir’s academy is located.
“I should add, though,” he said, “that, while the series might have just sparked interest in the game, I have been seeing a long-term, passionate commitment to chess developing in all the people I teach, especially women and girls.”
Tissir knows a thing or two about that kind of commitment: the Moroccan international chess master – resident in Bahrain since 2007, because of marriage – won his first national championship at the age of 20 in his native Morocco. By the age of 23, when he won the 1999 African Chess Championship, he had already represented his country in several Chess Olympiads.
Over the next few years, he would play in the 2000 Chess World Cup and win a gold medal at the 2004 Chess Olympiad in Spain.
A FIDE (Federation Internationale des Echecs – International Chess Federation) trainer, Tissir set up the academy in 2012 because he wanted to pass on his knowledge to as many people as he could.
“I wanted other people to experience it because chess is the only truly global sport,” he explained. “It is estimated that, every day, more than 60 million games are played across the world on average.”
Now, his academy has 60 students, both male and female, of all ages, with classes held in the evenings, six days a week.
“We also teach a couple of times in four schools to a combined total of 40 students,” Tissir said. “And we conduct tournaments every Thursday night and Friday afternoon.”
In fact, Tissir said, the Bahrain Chess Academy has organised more than a hundred tournaments, recognised by the International Chess Federation.
“Our academy,” he said, proudly, “was ranked 10th in the world in a 2021 list of FIDE-endorsed academies.”
Just then, a young girl ran up to tell him that all the matches, that were in play, had finished. Tissir walked over to each table and engaged in conversation with all of the participants.
“We’ll just set up the lecture,” he told them, inspecting some multi-media equipment. On the wall behind him, photographs of legendary past world chess champions looked approvingly down on the scene: about a dozen chess boards at the ready on as many tables with the players relaxing after spells of intense concentration.
“Chess is more than a game,” Tissir said. “It opens your mind up, builds up your concentration levels and aids your intellectual development. And, it has been proved that children who play chess usually do very well in school.”
He walked over to a table where two teenage opponents had just tried to outwit each other.
“This is Maram Al Musawi,” he said, as he introduced one of the girls. “She started playing chess in December of 2020. Two months ago, in December 2021, she represented Bahrain at the Women’s Arab Chess Championship.”
The 13-year-old responded quickly when Tissir asked her to reveal how she became so good in such a short span of time.
“My grandfather taught me how to play when I was little,” she said. “But then, I drifted away and didn’t actually play again until I came to this academy last year.”
Al Musawi, who has also won two school championships in the past 12 months, said she would recommend people of all ages to take up the sport, the younger the better.
“It teaches you how to use your brain as much as possible,” she explained.
At the next table, Wafa Ebrahim, a young woman, in her mid-twenties, looked up from her chess board.
“I played this game as a kid,” she said. “But couldn’t find the time as I was growing up. I’m an entrepreneur now and recently thought I’d try my hand at it again. It’s been a month now and I’m looking to compete in a major tournament.”
Ebrahim said she understood that the effort, to become good enough to participate in a tournament of any consequence, would take some doing. “But once you’re committed to something, you have to chase after what you want and make the right moves,” she said, simply.
Check mate.
adnan@gdn.com.bh
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