Board Wars: A New Hope?

There’s been a cracking interest in the Quiz, which is surprising.  From most of the reports I’ve gotten, it seems my questions were unfortunately very much ‘Google-able’.  A shame.  However, some of the questions at least (such as the herb on my balcony) seem to have been particularly tricky.  I have no regrets. 

Kudos to the hilarity and effort put in to your submissions – I’ll have hours of entertainment going through these.  There’s still time for those of you who haven’t submitted yet – get your Haiku hats on!

In chess-related news:  the London Chess Classic started last week, and features some real heavyweights: Carlsen, Anand, Kramnik, Nakamura… But the surprise leader in the early stages, and currently joint leader with Anand and Carlsen with just two rounds to go, is the English prodigal son, Luke McShane.

(In traditional chess terms, Luke is joint leader with Anand on two wins and three draws each from their five games.  But the tournament uses the unusual and very cool soccer scoring system of three points for a win, one for a draw.  So Carlsen, with three wins and two losses, joins them on nine ‘tournament points’.)

Local-boy Luke was not meant to feature highly in the standings, having been out of professional chess for quite a few years and being out-rated by the top seeds by over 150 ELO points.  But he quickly dispelled those predictions with a stunning first-round win over the world number one, Magnus Carlsen.  And his form hasn’t let up.  Take note, pundits:  this tournament will go down as Luke’s coming-of-age to the ranks of the world’s elite.

I first met Luke at the World Junior Championships in Goa, India in 2002.  The English wonder-kid, as he was known, grabbed the outright lead by beating me on board one in round four, and nearly went on to take the title – only bested in the end by none other than Lev Aronian.  We then crossed paths on the beaches of Majorca in the 2004 Olympiad, where it seemed clear the newest member of the English men’s team was here to stay.

And then he fell off the map.

The chess map, that is.  Luke went to Oxford to study mathematics and philosophy, and then joined Goldman Sachs as a trader in 2006.  Since then I’ve been keenly curious as to what happened to him; if I, a lowly 2500, could give up a banking career just to keep a foot in the door of the chess world, is it really possible that the immensely talented (and former world under-10 champion) could really give up the Game of Kings for the commercial world?

Luke’s name popped up on occasionally at the odd German Bundesliga match, but we didn’t see him at the 2006 or 2008 Olympiads.  Too bad, the chess world cried.  What a loss.

And then, suddenly, the man was back.  Sporting a new hairdo and finally some resemblance of an opening repertoire, Luke burst back on the scene following the global financial crisis.  At first I thought that perhaps the crash had chopped off his job at Goldman, but Luke told me at the recent Olympiad in Siberia that the attraction of the chess world was just too much – and, besides, he was into foreign exchange rather than credit default swaps or securitisation.  (I should have asked him about the Aussie dollar while I was over there.)

Chess and the financial world have always had an interesting relationship.  Aussie private investor and recently Dragon’s Den television star Richard Farleigh shifted from a chess career to become one of Australia’s greatest ever young traders.  English grandmaster David Norwood is another who opted for a lucrative career, also starting out at Banker’s Trust.  Back in Oz, my good friend Jonathan Humphrey was on the cusp of the IM title when he accepted an offer at McKinsey, essentially killing his chess ambitions but kick-starting his career in the process.  The list goes on.  The correspondence between the skills of both fields is strong – but the financial rewards are vastly different.

Still, in my opinion, one is art and one is work.  One is enthusiastic fun; one is a hard slog.  One is beautiful; one is ugly.  And, dare I say it, one creates – and one destroys. 

Am I jealous much?  Maybe.

Still, the financial world, post-crisis, has taken on the reputation of the over-funded but morally bankrupt Death Star of the universe, with the chess-playing Rebel Fleet fighting to keep the rebellion alive.  In that sense, I’m sure the chess world joins me in being very glad indeed to have Luke back.  Not only is he an extremely talented chess player with an eclectic and eccentric style, but he’s also a nice guy with a similarly entertaining dancing fashion.  And it’s very nice indeed to have our prodigal son return from the Dark Side.

I shouldn’t get ahead of myself with this praise, of course.  There are, after all, still two rounds to go in the tournament.  But I have high hopes for our young Boardwaker.

Use the Force, Luke.