School can be pretty boring. Some obligatory courses can be not interesting at all and a teacher just reading out his papers won't make his classes popular. Nevertheless I very rarely was absent during my schoolyears. Only at the university when after 15 minutes waiting for the start of the lesson still nobody popped up, I dared to leave. This doesn't mean that I was always attentive in the class. It happened once in a while that I played some blindfold-chess with another student having 1900 elo. There was no chess-comfort at all but at such moments you don't care.
Maximum chess-comfort I experienced in the highest divisions of the French interclub. I remember a match where we played in a luxurious meeting-room of a 5 stars hotel. During the match we got free drinks and even small snacks. Big sound-proof doors and an attentive arbiter maintained complete silence in the playing-room. Such conditions we can only dream about in Belgium. On the other hand as mentioned in a reaction of my last article, conditions can become pretty bad sometimes.
Last this was also the case in the interclubmatch against Jean Jaures. Jean Jaures plays this season in the same club-house as KGSRL so must be satisfied with their rooms in surplus. As consequence 2 teams were propped in one very tiny room. I estimate 20 players were squeezed in just 15m2. The match was just started and our first board Jan Rooze told me that he has to disturb me every time when he wants to leave the playing-room. Besides 6 out of 8 people are +50 so automatically you have much more toiletvisits than averagely (age has a serious impact for the prostate). The only patch I found was to push my table with my belly from the moment my opponent Ashote Draftian had left our table for a walk. Nobody complained even when later the frame of a painting located behind my opponents back almost dropped from the wall when somebody accidentally hit it.
Myself I can easily sit whole afternoon on my chair when there is little space to maneuver. For some time already I always bring my own food and drinks to the matches. However I wasn't protected against the noise. Everybody was very surprised that the door of the playing-room could not be closed despite some very recent thorough renovations. This created a lot of noise from below and the corridor. I still forget to take my earplugs with me. I lost a lot of time in the opening as I couldn't concentrate properly. Playing chess while pushing the fingers in the ears is not comfortable at all. I was lucky to avoid defeat being low of time by liquidating to an endgame .
Personally I find this outrageous especially if you know that many players are paid. It shows a complete lack of respect for the players to only prioritize winning. Besides also Jean Jaures shows the same symptoms. They were not ashamed to add a grandmaster on the first board. Our strong Jan was the victim.
I realize many clubs have very little means but especially when professionals are playing some minimum chess-comfort should be demanded. In Germany something already exists see schachblev turnierordnung with strict rules about temperature (20-23 degrees Celsius), space 75m2 for 1 match, minimum 2,6m altitude for the ceiling,... Without any regulations you can't expect any chess-comfort. Once a home-team dared to invite their opponents in a prostitution-house. Of course the visiting-team refused to play and filed a complaint.
Brabo
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