3/9/2023 – Chess and football might have more in common than first meets the eye, but in fact, there are parallel ideas of visual spatial intelligence in both chess and football. Which is one reason why Jason Kouchak, composer, pianist and avid chess fan supports "The Rooks", a women's football team in Lewes, Sussex, England. | Photo: Magnus Carlsen shows his football skills. | Photo: Lennart Ootes
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Text: Julian Paix
Jason Kouchak has encouraged, and promoted chess at a Woman’s Football Team in Lewes, Sussex. The football queens are also known as 'The Rooks' and play chess before each football match as a means of improving their visual spatial intelligence and performance.
The power to understand spatial concepts and movement on the field with pace, precision and power are essential for their visualisation process.
Jason Kouchak with two of the "rooks" and chessboard. Kouchak also donated a chess set and pieces in the Lewes FC football colours to the girls. | Photo: Julian Paix
Jason Kouchak and the Lewes "Rooks" Chess Queens | Photo: Julian Paix
There are parallel ideas of visual spatial intelligence in both chess and football. The development of spatial and movement concepts together with the understanding of open space/position and closed spaces/positions are an integral part of both chess and football training.
Image | Sara Licznerska
The ability for a player to visualise their surroundings and other players directions, reactions and connections to the ball is similar to a chess players ability to visualise and co-ordinate his/her chess pieces.
Pep Guardiola, manager (Bayern Munich 2013-2016 now Manchester City) and friend of Kasparov’s says: "We need to be able to vary our tactical formation in response to the rhythm and demands of each game."
Pep Guardiola focuses on his game. | Photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images
In chess as in football, agents/players compete in space and time dynamic and need to be ‘in tune’ with their reading of the spatial- functional or structural relationships between chess pieces or football players in a linear grid.
The chess pieces move across planned projectories whereas in football 22 players move in different directions at different speeds.
Each player needs a mental engine to create a 'mind-map' for making decisions about the next move on the chessboard or when to release the football on the pitch.To 'think outside the box' is this process of visualisation to understand the open lines,spaces and options available in his/her immediate surroundings.
It’s little wonder that even Magnus Carlsen has been able to transpose his chess abilities to his fantasy football leadership skills.
Magnus Carlsen likes to play football | Photo: Lennart Ootes
You will learn how Black's dynamic piece activity and structural counterplay more than compensate for White's extra tempo in the colour-reversed setups.
In this course, you’ll learn how to take the initiative against the London and prevent White from comfortably playing their usual system by playing 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bf4 Nh5.
London System Powerbase 2026 is a database and contains in all 11 285 games from Mega 2026 and the Correspondence Database 2026, of which 282 are annotated.
The London System Powerbook 2026 is based on more than 410 000 games or game fragments from different opening moves and ECO codes; what they all have in common is that White plays d4 and Bf4 but does not play c4.
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Opening videos: Open Spanish (Sipke Ernst) and Classical Sicilian (Nico Zwirs). Endgame Special by Igor Stohl: ‘Short or long side’ – where should the defending king be placed in rook endgames? ‘Lucky bag’ with 35 master analyses.
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