Miguel Illescas He was born in Barcelona in 1965. With a very self-taught chess apprenticeship, he achieved in 1986 the title of International Master and in 1988 that of International Grand Master. He has also been champion of Spain eight times: 1995, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2010. In 1992 he was the first Spanish to reach 2,600 ELO points. In 1997 he was hired by IBM to help change the way machines played chess and with Deep Blue defeated Gari Kaspárov, the current champion. In addition, Illescas has been an analyst coach of Grand Master Vladimir Krámnik from 1999 to 2006 and was part of the team that led to the victory of Krámnik in the Elista World Cup in 2006, against Topalov. He also leads the Edami school of chess in Barcelona and is encouraging with the writing of books that allow him to spread his experiences of enormous success. Have posted Checkmate in which you can find valuable lessons on how to conduct business management oriented to achieve results. It is a pleasure to bring Miguel Illescas to Peques y Más and I recommend reading his interview in El Mundo, which encouraged me to contact Miguel and talk to him about chess and its applications in education, although the interview allowed us to talk about many more things.
What is the situation of chess in Spain
Chess has many aspects in Spain. The moment of Chess in the educational or social aspect is very developed. Chess plays a leading role in the treatment of ADHD, in the implementation in schools, in the reintegration of prisoners and in many other activities.
However in the sporty look have a bad moment. There are practically no sponsors, there are no outstanding players because it is very difficult to make it compatible with other activities. In Spain we have David Anton, you can read an interview in 20 minutes, which with 18 years, will start studying mathematics and will have many difficulties to reconcile studies, a career with high demands, with chess.
Yes you can say that the chess is very good for an amateur player Because there are many tournaments where you can play, make yourself known and progress.
The big players in Spain compete with countries like Ukraine that have average salaries of 300 and 400 euros. If a player from that country makes a world tour he can live in his country for many months. In Spain the income that a tournament has is valid for players from other countries, although clearly insufficient in Spain. In the 80s there were three or four great masters accessing reasonable prizes, after the fall of the wall and so far, the number of great masters who attend the tournaments does not fall below forty so there are more than 35 that do not They can access the prizes.
Anyway, the sponsors are showing up, although there is no record that chess and the return on investment by sponsorships can be achieved. And it also highlights the appearance of patrons, who want to associate their image and their projects with chess.
In any case for the world top 20, the chess situation is very good because there are many tournaments underway and the agenda is almost full as Krámnik tells me.
What skills and abilities does chess not develop
Chess has three components, the scientific, the artistic and the competitive. Chess is art, science and game or sport. It is also individual and that is why parents want their children to perform activities in which they also play as a team because they learn other values such as solidarity, helping others. Chess is perfectly complemented with football, with the theater, with music, with the painting of a painting where things are not right or wrong as in chess.
Chess is individual and must be complemented with other activities where team play
Chess is an aggressive and cruel game in which you win and lose and that component must be filed especially at short ages. The challenge is to take away the obsession of winning or losing by giving more importance to play and learn. In addition, chess is introverted, you do not learn to interact with others although you develop the ability to interpret what the opponent wants and you learn a lot to listen. And if you do not listen to the opponent you will play badly because each play that the opponent makes marks the development of the game. It also develops an empathy although it does not allow it to be put into practice as can the practice of a conversation or a dialogue with other children.
In the case of video games or game consoles, it can be said that the routine of the game is learned in the first fifteen or twenty minutes of practicing it and then the structure is repeated over and over again. For example, in the Angry Birds you can learn how to throw the birds by taking advantage of the angles and relating the logic and space, although beyond playing a couple of days it could be considered a vice because it does not contribute anything.
In chess the tools are very rich, for example, the movements of the players, the geometry of the pieces and the discipline of the game make it exist for 2,000 years and never get tired of playing.
What is the recommended age for children to approach chess
In Edami we work from the age of six That is when children can learn to perform chess movements and understand the value of the pieces. In the case of younger children, perhaps the most representative experience is that of Adriana Salazar in Colombia who successfully works the Chess initiative in the classroom using chess in a transversal way with songs, dances, theater, etc.
To get a boy to play well you have to start soon, typically six years, to develop his talent.
What is the experience of the Miguel Illescas chess school (EDAMI)
In Edami we have been chessing schools since 1999, although with the objective of take advantage of chess in a pedagogical way and to teach techniques and tools to children in preschool and primary school. We do not apply a model, type Carlsen, to train great champions and the goal is to learn and have fun with an hour or two hours a week. More time is not necessary because it will not produce any additional beneficial effects. Chess is a bit like everything and spending more time does not generate any positive effect as long as you have no outstanding quality.
Chess teaches how to solve problems, face them and help manage stress
In the case of Magnus Carlsen, the father teaches the son to play with four or five years. However, the boy does not show special interest although when he sees how his sister begins to progress, Carlsen decides to recover the illusion and is encouraged to try to overcome it with great freedom from his parents. In addition, as the father observes that he has the capacity and stands out in other qualities, for example memory, he decides to point it at the age of eight or nine to a chess club.
As to success stories, UNESCO recommends applying chess in schools since the 80s. There are many studies, such as 2012, led by Ramón Aciego, Lorena García (psychologist) and Moisés Betancort in which the benefits of chess are documented to enrich abilities intellectual and socio-emotional children in the report (The Benefits of Chess for the Intellectual and Social-Emotional Enrichment in Schoolchildren (pdf)). The Germans are also eliminating an hour of math replacing it with an hour of chess improving school performance. And it is that arithmetic can be learned through the practice of chess.
Chess teaches how to solve problems, face them and manage the stress of how to do it. It can be considered that its benefits are great and are applicable in other activities. Chess teaches to fight, to surrender to strive. Very interesting values are those that enhance chess.
What are the professional skills that will be demanded in the future and how can chess help to achieve them
The El Mundo newspaper interview talked about how Carlsen has a way of learning favored by the generalization of the use of technology and that he has applied perfectly in chess learning.
The people of my generation are halfway to the current situation. And when the Internet appears I am already trained as a player and the use I can make of technology I have to learn later. When I was little I had to look for information while current children have to learn to filter information.
That is why it is worrisome that in the current education system subjects are taught as computer science and in the way they are taught. The subject of Computing is obsolete and for what it has to serve the computer science is for be transveral in education. It is as if they had to tell us that we have to learn to walk or think, it is absurd. In addition, new tools have to be incorporated, I don't know if learning to program could be one of them, and encourage schoolchildren to become advanced users of technology. In my time I studied Latin in high school and although it seems that it is of no use really Latin taught logic that can be applied in many other situations.
Children must be motivated not to get tired of learning
In addition you have to look for the motivation among children because they currently have difficulty finding stimuli to launch into learning. For example, technology allows you to give the play button to listen to a story and thus it is difficult to motivate them to learn to read. When I was little, my stimulus to learn to read is that I wanted to know what I put in the stories.
In education, reality goes well ahead of those who regulate and plan and that has to change and adapt. Many teachers and parents are taking advantage of the means at our disposal to boost the learning of their students and children, although in a very impulsive way. The education system, especially the western one, has to adapt to new situations and encourage widespread use of technology in learning. For example, learning History when you have the information within the reach of a click does not seem to be necessary, however if it will be very important to develop skills to interpret History, to know the cause-effect relationships. It is the task of those who know much more than me to develop the best educational programs.
The use and applications of machines and technology is progressing at a good pace and proof of this is how they are applied in, for example, the attention and marketing of products via telephone. In the Microsiervos article, "If you are not a robot, simply say: I am not a robot", it shows how the machines are being used although still with many limitations. In this case the virtual operator goes crazy trying to answer the client's question.
We can say that Carlsen is half man and half machine and probably in a few years we will have many tasks that we perform routinely. In chess you can tell a lot about which players are capable of learning to manage and manage information and take advantage of the use of technology to extract competitive advantages.
What practical applications does chess have in the company
With my team of collaborators we have set up the Chess and Business site to take advantage of Chess knowledge oriented to the professional and not only academic environment as we have commented at the beginning.
Chess is a decision maker and is pure strategy
Chess is a decision maker and is pure strategy. These are skills that are highly valued in the business environment. For example, for a manager it can be very interesting to know how Kasparov prepared a world championship or for a group of human resources how Krámnik managed the team during the preparation of his final triumph.
At book Checkmate, from which I have been told that with small strokes it could become a self-help book, it explains how to use the tools and how to develop techniques that allow people to learn to be methodical, to develop their talent, to get the best out of themselves and thus get better results.
Some entrepreneurs comment that "life is like a competition" in which we have win-lose situations and where you have to know how to manage having the best tools. Chess provides these valuable tools and techniques to manage successfully.
How can parents help to know and practice chess with our children
Parents have to be very strict and we have to give a lot of importance to education. The challenge is to make him understand that the interesting thing is to learn and do new things, not to be discouraged and that once a tool is mastered you have to lose interest and find another new challenge. When I train strong players many want to train what they do well when what needs to be done and train is to improve what is done badly even if we don't like it.
When children master a tool, they have to lose interest in it.
All children like to be the best because their self-esteem grows. For example, in the case of video games once the routine is learned, it is not necessary to improve or progress further although the claim of success, the record of the score for example, encourages them to continue playing. And yet it does not contribute much and not even letting children play an hour or half an hour a day, as the parents say, it seems like a good practice. It is important to know what kind of game it is, what values it brings, what intelligence it develops, etc. and that is why parents have to spend time playing with the child and know how it impacts their development.
If parents do not have time to educate their children, we will really have a problem when they grow up and we will have little reason to complain.
And we can not delegate, for example at school, because in school the little one can spend eight hours a day although in a class of twenty children the attention that the teacher devotes to each of them does not exceed twenty minutes. It is necessary to realize the responsibility of parents in education.
How can we get teachers to become more involved in teaching and apply the methods
Society has to pressure public authorities so that education receives the attention and importance it deserves. The people who make the decisions have to become aware because even if they go slower and behind in time they finally arrive. In Spain, education is highly politicized and should shame politicians who are unable to agree. It is not given enough importance and parents also have to do it. It is important that we be aware and not frivolize and that we contribute constructive proposals.
In Edami we make chess available to schools that many colleges collect and apply. The directives of UNESCO, the Spanish Senate, the European Union are transposing and many schools apply it in the educational process. There is a lot of dispersed initiative and it should be more global. For example, in Catalonia a project is launched so that chess is in more than 100 schools, although the budget is zero. The risk of such initiatives is that teachers will not have the necessary technical qualification and the results will not be the most appropriate.
What movie themed chess movies do you recommend
Ender's GameCurrently, it shows how children play and develop the strategy to direct interstellar warfare. A book written in the 80s that describes the Internet or social networks that are now a reality. Searching for Bobby Fischer teaches very honestly what chess means in school.
On another level, not educational, the Diagonal del loco, with the fight between Korchnoi and Karpov. A movie about Capablanca is available on YouTube. In addition The game of chess based on the novel by Stephan Zweig, a fabulous story. In addition there are films, like a recent one of the Spanish cinema, that falls in the topics of the chess and are not very recommendable. And then there are horrible things like Checkmate the killer of Christopher Lambert who was a chess champion flirting being totally different from what happens in reality.
How was the experience of working in the programming of Deep Blue in the confrontation against Kasparov
The first time I played with Deep Blue, developed by IBM, I told the scientists that they couldn't get anything at all, that they couldn't win because although the machine played quite well the scientists who had developed it didn't have bad milk. So I told them that Kasparov was going to devour them. They listened to me and we began to collaborate by introducing elements of a practical order to play chess in a different way and with the aim, in addition, of winning, which totally surprised Kasparov who was defeated in 1997.
The work with Deep Blue was to practice openings, teach the machine to understand and get human thinking to zeroes and ones, which in the end is what the machine uses. One of the leaders of the project was Murray Campbell who, in addition to being an engineer, was a good quality chess player. With Murray, for example, we develop strategies to identify and assess the impact on the game of having weak squares. In that way we could make the machine understand that chess was much more than a succession of plays and valuation of pieces. These practices are already incorporated by the machines that play chess and make them fearsome to face them.
When Kasparov faced this way of playing he was very surprised and valued some plays of Deep Blue, especially the play of the bishop because it seemed made by a human.
The project for IBM was a scientific project and many of the achievements that have been achieved have had subsequent application such as video recognition and tagging, also in wind tunnel optimization, drug design, parallel processing and many more. That project died of success and closed when Kasparov decided not to face Deep Blue again, so they threw us all out! although IBM professionals, such as Murray Campbell, continued in the company developing projects of great interest.
You can read a lot of information about the experience with Deep blue in the book of Checkmate.
I end by thanking Miguel Illescas all the time spent, almost an hour of Skype interview, in which we talk about chess and its application in education, at school and how it helps business management. It has also allowed us to know what Miguel's experience of success has been, participating very actively in many of the most important moments in the history of chess, which I wish and hope will continue in the future.
