• Popularized by the series

    Le Jeu de la dame

    on Netflix, the game of chess fascinates without distinction of age or culture.

  • The international Henri-Rinck tournament, which takes place from Wednesday to Saturday in Lyon, welcomes a large number of very high level minors.

  • A game of strategy and combat, chess brings multiple benefits to the development of children.

A sixty-year-old holds his head in his hands, his eyes riveted on a chessboard.

His adversary has just dealt a fatal blow to his queen.

He frowns, annoyed.

Then raises his head and smiles, defeated, at the 12-year-old boy who has just checked him.

At the town hall of the 9th arrondissement of Lyon, this Wednesday, the wedding hall has turned into a tournament hall.

That of the international Henri-Rinck chess championship, organized by the LOE (Lyon Olympique Chess), which sees a hundred amateurs of seven different nationalities compete until Saturday.

Free initiations are also offered every day to novices.

After the forced break due to the health crisis, the club is happy to resume the oldest tournament in France.

"This Championship has existed since 1893, as evidenced by the archives of the club, which was created for it in 1905", explains Christophe Leroy, director of the club and organizer of the tournament.

“Henri Rinck was a great player, a well-known problem solver in the world of chess.

For novices, he was also a relative of the former owners of Brasserie Georges!

»

Initiations in extracurricular all year round

This year, the competitors are aged 9 to 76 years old.

But in the room, it is mostly children and teenagers who move from one chessboard to another.

"The LOE is one of the top three clubs in France in terms of the number of licensees: 500, half of which are young people", specifies Christophe Leroy.

“We are very present in primary schools in Lyon, thanks to the agreement with the City of Lyon to intervene in extracurricular activities.

This represents 7,000 young people initiated per year in Lyon.

The LOE also created the first chess sports-studies section in 2019.

Last March, the French Chess Federation signed a public service delegation contract with the Ministry of Sports, which will allow it, like "physical" sports, to benefit from financial aid from the State, and therefore to reinforce the high level.

In chess, this is revealed from a tender age: “We have a 7-year-old who manages to remember 10 moves in advance, whereas many adult players are incapable of doing so”, confides the director.

Last weekend, the club welcomed the young Corsican Marc'Andria Maurizzi, who became an international grandmaster last year at only 14 years old.

“I played with him, I'm an international player but he massacred me…”, recognizes Christophe Leroy.

“And he won all his other games, with his mischievous look.

»

Certain educational and relational benefits

Christophe Mathieu, treasurer of the LOE and father of a young competitor, does not stop talking about the educational aspect of the noble game. decisions quickly, to strengthen spatial identification", he explains.

“Studies comparing children who play chess with those who play football have shown that among the former, the most developed skill was mastery of language.

Because when we teach chess to a child, we ask him to explain his choices.

He is therefore led to express himself, and to speak in front of a group.

»

But for the treasurer, the most valuable contribution of chess is relational: “It's a fighting game, and any player knows that if he underestimates his opponent, he's going to take a good beating.

And if he gets into a submissive position, he won't be able to play properly.

Children have understood this instinctively, when they are passionate about this "universal game which erases differences, whether physical or cultural: in chess, we learn to think together", concludes Christophe Mathieu.

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  • Company

  • Chess

  • board games

  • Games

  • Child

  • Lyons

  • Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes