Kasparov meets the hoodies

“That’s it, bruv,” says 20-year-old Ashley Andrew to Nathan Richards in the semi-final of the inaugural Hardcore Is More than Music chess tournament at Paddington’s Stowe Centre. Which is one way of saying “checkmate”. Andrew shakes Richards by the hand, smiles broadly and goes off to embrace his mates, before facing hot favourite Angel Blanco-Lista in the final.

This event is a unique and, for a chess nut like me, encouraging one. Here are 16 streetwise inner-city youngsters, aged from 12 to 20, turning up at a youth centre on a Wednesday evening to play a game usually associated with spotty boys in public schools and elderly men in anoraks. The standard’s not great – “I don’t think there’s any evidence that the players are using computers,” says the tournament arbiter drily when I mention the fact that one of them is wearing headphones and most have put their mobiles next to the board – but the enthusiasm is evident.

Admittedly, a few incentives were laid on to guarantee attendance. The centre’s organiser, Michael Dipple, mentions lap dancers, but I think he is joking; a supper courtesy of Nando’s Chicken Restaurants is promised; and, least likely of all, Garry Kasparov, the former chess world champion and highest-rated player of all time, is due to open the event. “He’s a legend, my hero,” says chess-mad Angel, though Ashley admits he’s never heard of him.

Kasparov is in London promoting his self-help book, How Life Imitates Chess, and has been enticed along by BBC2’s The Culture Show, which is making a programme about the growth of inner-city chess, especially in the US where it doesn’t suffer the stereotyping it gets here. The tournament brochure quotes Maurice Ashley, who in 1999 became the first African-American grandmaster and has spearheaded the growth of chess in Harlem, saying “chess and hip-hop definitely have elements that are intertwined”. If The Culture Show can make that argument stick, it really will be a new dawn for the game.

Kasparov, as usual, is engaging, rapid and to the point. He makes fun of the arbiter for an error in the brochure that has put the semi-finals before the quarters – “an unusual competition,” he says. He also insists everyone plays, including the reluctant ones lurking on the fringes of the room – “courage is the first of human qualities, as Churchill said, because that is the quality that guarantees all the others”.

“What chess piece do you like playing with the most?” Wayne O’Brien, a 17-year-old in a bright red baseball cap, asks him. “If you play chess professionally, you should like what you have,” he says. “The best chess piece is the one that’s most useful now. In life you discover situations when you don’t like what you have, but that’s all you have. If you want to win the game, you have to use all the materials at your elbow.” “Cool, man,” says Wayne.

“Who has been your greatest opponent?” asks Nina Manandhar, one of the two ebullient twentysomethings who run Hardcore is More than Music, which has organised the event and helped capture Kasparov. “We always face the greatest opponent in ourselves,” he replies in full life-imitates-chess mode. “The secret of success is inside us. Any game that you lose, first you lose prematurely in your mind. Psychologically, you stop playing. You can always find the moment when your mind already stops resisting.” He retired from competitive chess in 2005 to take on his biggest ever match – against the Kremlin – and President Putin would be foolish to underestimate Kasparov’s own powers of resistance.

After he has opened the tournament – “all 16 are playing, that’s already our first victory” he enthuses – I ask him whether he thinks chess really can reach inner-city areas. “In America it already is,” he tells me. “Look at the national schools championship. You see some kids coming there in buses from downtown Detroit or Chicago, and others being flown there by their parents in the family jet. Chess is probably the only game that goes beyond social status, race, education and physical ability.”

He says initiatives such as the Stowe Centre’s have been happening in the US for the past 20 years. “In areas like South Bronx and downtown Chicago, chess is bringing kids from the streets to a more civilised environment; it channels their aggression and they learn some good things. They don’t have to be great players; they just have to enjoy doing it.”

Does he worry about the lack of girls at this event? I count one, and even she seems to be doubling as a photographer. “In America, the proportions are not as bad,” says Kasparov, “but even there it’s about four to one in favour of boys.” Dipple says he is looking at ways to get more young women interested, but it remains problematic. Girls seem to prefer life to the imitations.

Kasparov is whisked away – books to sign, plane to catch, political battles to fight – and the tournament gets under way. “It’s never been so quiet in here,” says Nendio Pinto-Duschinsky, the other Hardcore organiser. I ask three of the first-round losers how they feel. “You’re laughing at us,” one of them says accusingly. I protest that I just want their thoughts on the game.

“When I started playing, I thought it was a boring game for old people,” says 16-year-old Manoj Pujari, “but the more I played the more I came to like it, and now I play whenever I get the chance. It helps you think, makes you sharper, and you can be aggressive without being physical. I don’t know much about Kasparov, but it’s good he took the time to come out and look at young people playing chess.”

“I enjoy chess a lot,” says 19-year-old Kareem Mokaddem. “I don’t play it often because the set I have at home has some pieces missing, so it’s good we can play here. The nerdy stereotype is just an idea that people have in their head. I enjoy playing and I’m not much of a nerd. Around here you either come to the youth club or you loiter on the streets. There isn’t much else to do.”

“Chess is something that has grown organically,” Dipple, who has been a youth worker in Paddington for 21 years, tells me later. “We had some sets, and the youngsters just started playing. As a game it’s usually associated with middle and upper-class people, so it was refreshing to see that even the ones here who didn’t know chess were being taught by those who did. We don’t have grandmasters here, but we have youngsters who are enthusiastic and enjoy it. You can see the excitement in their faces when they are trying to outwit their opponents. There’s good banter as well: if you lose in two minutes it motivates you to really observe the games and start learning, because you don’t want to be the crap one in the group. It’s competitive, but it’s a friendly competition.”

Angel proves the point. He appears to be coasting in the final, but omits to take Ashley Andrew’s queen when he has the chance and falls to a shock checkmate. The underdog has had his day, and is clearly not going to take his winner’s medal off for several days. But Angel handles defeat with dignity. “Losing is part of winning – that’s my philosophy,” he says. “A lot of guys here won’t play because they don’t like losing. But losing isn’t a bad thing. You can’t progress unless you learn from your mistakes.” Angel’s self-help book will no doubt appear shortly.

How Life Imitates Chess is published by Heinemann (£20)

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