How did Noble get into chess in the first place?
“With a punch and a kick,” he said. “I had seen my brother moving pieces around on the board and went over and sat and watched. He had no one to play with so I first got interested then. When I started getting things wrong, I got the punch and a kick!” Noble was nine years old.
That love of chess continues and he now teaches the game in schools throughout the Gisborne district.
Bailey Sadlier, (aka The King from Tolaga Bay) is a winner of the Jim Holdsworth Memorial Trophy, which goes to the top chess player in Tairāwhiti.
“After watching the movie, I had to see it, the Eastern Knights Club.”
He said about 25 people, mainly kids, were showing up then. Today that number has fallen to about 12. It was there he met Noble, “so I played some of their best players — beat them of course”, he said with a chuckle.
Bailey’s enthusiasm for the game grew and he ended up starting a chess club in 2016 at Tolaga Bay, which ran for about two years. He said it was “just a place kids could go to play chess in Tolaga”.
The club slowly fizzled out, and the doors were closed. “We had started the club and within nine months we built them up to be tournament- worthy. Kids still ask me, ‘when are you doing chess?’ Work commitments mean Bailey hasn’t been involved much these days.
“It has come to a halt, but hopefully only a temporary one. I did a little bit of work through Tolaga Bay Area School.”
He saw a surge of keen chess converts inspired by the movie.
Bailey still stands by the “Genesis” method.
That is a reference to speed chess champion, player and coach Genesis Potini, whose story is the centre of The Dark Horse. Cliff Curtis played Genesis, who passed away in 2011, in the movie.
Bailey explains the Genesis method as specific steps of how to progress through the game.
“Moving the pieces is easy, but if you’re talking strategy it takes a little bit extra, just like any sport.”
Bailey regularly fronts up for the Ngati Porou inter-marae sports festival Pa Wars in Ruatoria, an annual event where local marae come together and compete in various sports. The numerous activities include tennis, darts, touch rugby, rugby 7s, volleyball, kiorahi and even line dancing — and chess. Sadlier signed up and won the chess section twice, but narrowly missed to a visitor last year by a mere second.
“You get 15 minutes each to make a move. It came down to one second. I had trained so hard, and it came down to that. He was very good.”
Noble would love to see more people come and learn the game. The Kings meet every Thursday night from 6pm at the Ilminster Intermediate School Hall, 70 De Lautour Road, Kaiti.
“We don’t care what colour, red, black, white, yellow, we’re all the same — it’s the same language on a chessboard,” he said.
“Everyone’s welcome and there are all different age groups.”
The clubs haven’t been outside of Gisborne to compete since Covid lockdowns, but tournaments have started up again.
It is hoped that the Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit”, which took the world by storm at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, has drawn attention back to the game, described by French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal as “the gymnasium of the mind”.
