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Disrespect in Chess
Disrespect in Chess
Walter Oh, Y11A
Disrespect in Chess
As time passes, matches are played for all sports, whether friendly or competitive. Many sports can be considered respectful even if the games are competitive; sometimes even considered friendly between opposing players or teams. At least, that’s how it’s meant to be. In chess, however, there are games that are disrespectful: players that are not kind towards each other, etc. So, here, I would like to explain the infamous, disrespectful acts there are in chess (I will be assuming you have a basic knowledge of chess, since I will not be explaining how to play chess in this article).
Firstly, we have an opening known as the Bongcloud opening. Bongcloud opening, also sometimes called Bongcloud or Bongcloud attack, is an opening that moves the king out into the open in the second move as white (1. e4 e5 2. Ke2). King safety is one of the most important things in chess, as you want to prevent the opponent checkmating your king. By using this opening, not only do we do the complete opposite, but we also are disrespecting our opponent as this opening is showing a lack of respect for chess. Unless there is a brilliant strategy that you are planning to use by playing this opening, it is generally advised to not play the Bongcloud move.
Secondly, you may have heard the gaming term BM, which is an acronym for bad manners. In most games, for example in Brawl Stars and Clash Royale, there are people who spam crying emotes at the end of the game. This is an example of BM. A few months ago I was playing against someone and as I was playing from Hong Kong my location was shown on screen. Then, during our game he suddenly sent me a chat message saying something along the lines of “China Is Dumb” and “You Suck”. I decided to take this as a challenge and decided that where I am located makes no difference to my actual chess skills. I requested a rematch and he accepted it, continuing to taunt me. The second game I also lost, but in the third game, I managed to prove that whatever country flag you have does not matter as long as you have the skills. I even allowed him a rematch for the fourth game but he quitted. I decided to report him on the website as racist and although I have not checked, I think he was banned. My point is there are people that are racist, that have bad manners, and are not friendly at all. I hope that these kinds of people will understand that what they are doing is bad and they need to stop.
Thirdly, we have people who are stalling. Stalling in chess refers to not playing a single move for a lot of time when you are losing. This could be a tactic in some variant of chess (there is a variant called bughouse on chess.com which is 2 vs 2 and whatever piece your teammate catures, you get that piece back). In this case, stalling could be a tactic if your teammate is about to checkmate your opponent and they have less time than you. However, in normal chess (and most chess variants), stalling is bad behaviour and annoys the opponent, especially if you are losing significantly. Of course, some players may be actually thinking, but this is probably not the case if you use 5 minutes for one move in a 10 minute game.
Finally, we have people who promote all their pawns; which is unnecessary to win and takes a long time to checkmate. Of course, there is such a thing as resigning but some people deliberately have 9 queens on the board and trolling is bad manners in my opinion, even though in some scenarios it may be necessary.
In some chess websites, they will allow you to report the user who behaves badly. So if any of the above happens to you in an online chess game, don’t forget to report them and don’t let anything stop you from enjoying the game!
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