Society Launches Schools Chess Tournament
The Law Society of Scotland is pleased to announce sponsorship of a major chess championship for Scottish secondary schools. The Law Society of Scotland Secondary Allegro Team Championship will take place in the splendid surrounds of the Nelson Stand, Perth Racecourse, in Scone Palace Park, on Sunday 17th February.
Chess Scotland is organising the event on behalf of the Society.
Retired senior Scottish judge, Lord Kirkwood, will attend as a guest. As a student in the 1950s, Lord Kirkwood represented Scotland internationally. He once played against the legendary Viktor Korchnoi (USSR), on top board for Scotland in a World Students' Match.
Craig Pritchett, of Chess Scotland, said: "Many people have a stereotypical view that chess is a dreadfully slow game. In this event, however, teams will play five rounds of 50 minute chess for the entire game - overstep your individual 25 minute time allowance and you lose."
Douglas Mill, Chief Executive of the Society, is also a keen player, who starred in one of Scotland's top school teams in the 1970s.
He said: "Chess is a great game for young people. It enhances life skills, such as problem solving, critical analysis, concentration and teamwork. But, of course, fundamentally, like all great games, at its root it's just great fun."
The main tournament organiser, university student Lynsey Shovlin (18), is one of Scotland's top young players and organisers. A member of last year's winning Scotland Girls team in the Faber Cup, ahead of favourites England, she won the Cherie Booth QC Scottish Girl Player of The Year Award in 2005.
Many legal minds have turned to chess for recreation. The then Scottish Chess Association was founded at Sheriff Walter C. Spens' chambers in Glasgow in 1884. Sheriff Spens once defeated the incumbent world champion, Emanuel Lasker, in a friendly game played in the Glasgow Chess Club in 1899.
Lord Kames, pillar of the Scottish Enlightenment, is also understood to have been partial to the game in the 18th century; once he presided in a murder trial against Mathew Hay, an occasional chess opponent!
ENDS
NOTES:
1. For further information about Chess Scotland see www.ChessScotland.com
2. For further information about the Mathew Hay trial (Ayr Assizes, 1780) and particularly about Kames' reported post-trial aside following a guilty verdict, "...that's checkmate to you, Mathew", which Cockburn (Memorials of his Time, 1856, 117n) considered a piece of "judicial cruelty", but on which there is a modern 20th century counterview to the effect that Kames was simply speaking "... in a tone of quiet reflection ... on the element of chance in the legal process, and the finality of the verdict" (Peter Stein, "Legal thought in 18th century Scotland", pp 16-17) see: Lord Kames (Ross 1972), pp 308-311.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: Please contact Suzy Powell or Val McEwan at the Law Society of Scotland's corporate communications office on 0131 476 8115/226 8884. valeriemcewan@lawscot.org.uk / suzypowell@lawscot.org.uk
