Chess education is heating up: the world champion effect drives a new category of quality education

21st Century Business Herald reporter Wang Feng reported from Beijing that chess, a niche category of youth quality education, is now gradually heating up.

In 1991, Xie Jun became China's first female chess world champion and the first female world champion outside Europe in chess history. In the following years, a wave of chess fever was set off in China.

Du Chunhui, who was not yet 5 years old at the time, was also sent by his family to learn chess. "Xie Jun's success introduced ordinary families to chess, and had a subtle impact on the popularity of chess. Du Chunhui said he won the National Games chess championship in 2017.

In April 2023, Chinese chess player Ding Liren added another honor, becoming the 17th world champion in the history of chess and the first world chess champion from China.

The knock-on effect of this yet another milestone is happening. At this time, Du Chunhui had devoted himself to youth chess education. In recent years, he has seen more and more young people learning Xi chess in China, which has become a big sight in Shenzhen and other cities.

Recently, Spark Chess, of which Du Chunhui is the head of teaching and teaching and research, was launched, which is another online chess education brand for teenagers in recent years.

The rise of chess education is not just a simple addition of a new subdivision of youth quality education, it has a clear market demand and growth context behind it, and it also represents that the development momentum mechanism of youth quality education is undergoing structural changes.

Multiple factors are driving the chess education market

Chess education is a quality education category that has been neglected in China for a long time.

This is actually a long-established intellectual sport with a history of more than 2,000 years, with about 700 million chess fans around the world, and FIDE has 199 member countries, making it the second largest single sports organization in the world after FIFA.

Domestically, the penetration rate of chess education is often compared to Chinese chess and Go. The market penetration rate of Go education is currently ahead of chess, and it is in a period of rapid growth like chess, but from the perspective of international popularity, chess education is more imaginative.

From the perspective of market demand, the development of chess education has compound dividends.

First of all, the impact of chess on the improvement of young people's literacy and intellectual development has been widely recognized.

Chess has the reputation of "intellectual gymnastics" and "touchstone of human wisdom". "Many people think that chess is a game, but in fact, it is an educational tool, for people of all ages and all walks of life, after Xi learning the knowledge, theory and thinking of chess, it can greatly improve their learning Xi and work efficiency. Xu Jialiang, who is 92 years old this year, told the 21st Century Business Herald.

Xu Jialiang won the national chess championship in 1958 and is also the first international chess referee in China, and is still engaged in chess education.

Xu Jialiang said that chess can train the comprehensive quality of young people, including the ability to cooperate with each other, the psychological quality to resist setbacks and pressure, the imaginative artistic quality, and the physical quality to be able to endure consecutive hours of play.

Second, chess has formed a perfect competition and level certification system, which leads chess players to lifelong learning and Xi.

Competitions and examinations are of great value for externalizing the effect of quality education and attracting students to continue learning Xi which has been confirmed in art, programming and other categories.

The Chinese Chess Association is divided into 17 levels, 1-15 are chess players, and the lowest is 15 levels.

This ranking from easy to difficult is conducive to attracting young people to enter the field of chess and continue to learn Xi and compete.

Third, chess has been included in the special student program in some regions, which is a stepping stone for further education.

According to reports, the Binjiang Campus of Hangzhou No. 2 Middle School will recruit chess students for two consecutive years in 2022 and 2023, and the Xixi Campus of Xuejun Middle School will recruit chess students for the first time this year. The favor of these two top high schools in Hangzhou for chess players has sent a clear signal. In addition, many famous high schools in Qingdao, Shenzhen and other places have recruited chess students, and this year Qingdao also announced the enrollment plan for special students in the next three years, increasing the certainty of students who choose this channel for further study.

On the one hand, they can continue their studies through the path of sports students, and on the other hand, they often have a certain talent in intelligence, and even if they quit the special students, they will not affect the Xi of cultural courses.

It is worth noting that well-known financial universities such as Shanghai University of Finance and Economics also recruit chess escort students. "Teenagers who are good at chess have shown a special sensitivity and talent for numbers and mathematics, and many of them have studied finance. Du Chunhui said.

Fourth, due to its high global popularity, chess is an increasingly important background planning program when applying for overseas studies.

On the one hand, some overseas universities pay special attention to chess players, and even include them as a plus, on the other hand, chess is often a convenient way for overseas students to integrate into the local community.

Power shift for non-academic off-campus training

The significance of the rise of chess education is not only that a new niche category of youth quality education has been added. Du Chunhui estimates that there are about 3 million chess Xi players in the country, which means a training market of about 3 billion yuan per year.

Its significance lies in the fact that chess education clearly reflects the transformation of the dynamic mechanism of the development of the non-academic extracurricular training market.

In terms of the relationship with scientific Xi, non-disciplinary off-campus training is changing from being dependent on scientific Xi to integrating with scientific Xi.

Dependency means the difference between "main subject" and "minor subject", so when the pressure of academic and examination increases, traditional quality education such as sports and art will "give way" to learning scientific Xi, but the rise of new quality education categories such as programming, thinking, humanistic creation, and bilingual drama is highly integrated and complementary to scientific Xi, and even begins to replace extracurricular training in disciplines.

In terms of quality development, non-academic extracurricular training is changing from focusing on the development of a single quality to the development of comprehensive quality.

In the development of students' moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic and labor "five educations", the traditional quality education focuses more on a single quality such as physical, aesthetic and labor, but new categories such as chess are intellectual sports developed from sports projects, and new categories such as thinking and STEM have begun to penetrate and seize the intellectual education position traditionally occupied by academic extracurricular training.

In terms of the causal relationship with the results of cultural courses, non-academic extracurricular training is changing from affecting the test results of cultural courses to not contradicting cultural courses and even helping to take exams.

New categories such as chess, thinking, and STEM can help expand students' horizons, enrich students' knowledge, and develop students' thinking and logical skills.

In general, with the continuous emergence of new quality education categories, the development momentum of non-academic extracurricular training is shifting, from the traditional focus on satisfying interests to improving literacy. Chess education follows this trend and is one of the representatives of the shift process.

The development of the national market is uneven

In China, chess education is still a niche market, and there are shortcomings in its development.

This market is in its embryonic stage, and has ignited a "spark" in some places, but its development is uneven across the country.

The 21st Century Business Herald survey found that chess education in some places has seized the opportunity. As of 2022, there are eight national chess hometowns in China, and there are hundreds of chess schools.

Yuecheng District, Shaoxing City, Zhejiang Province has popularized chess teaching in more than 80 primary schools and kindergartens in the district, and many schools have formed a pair of chess for everyone, everyone can play chess, and the class is the arena, and there is a good atmosphere of events every week, and there are more than 50,000 children learning chess all year round in the district.

Although Dongchangfu District, Liaocheng City, Shandong Province, has only started to carry out large-scale chess sports in 2006, seven primary and secondary schools and kindergartens have been awarded the "National Chess Characteristic School", and the whole district has been awarded the "Hometown of Chess", with nearly 4,000 athletes in training all year round.

Shenzhen's chess popularity is even more prominent in China. "The industry jokes that chess clubs in Shenzhen are as common as convenience stores. Du Chunhui told the 21st Century Business Herald.

However, there is still huge scope for the popularization of chess across the country.

The educational institutions in this market are mainly local associations, chess clubs, and clubs, which are small and scattered, and lack well-known brands.

Du Chunhui introduced that Shenzhen's market is developing very well, and some clubs have more than 3,000 students in a district of Shenzhen. However, the 21st Century Business Herald survey found that in other first-tier cities, the scale of chess clubs is significantly smaller.

According to a 2022 Beijing chess education market research report, most of the chess clubs surveyed are less than 200 square meters in size, with less than 10 coaches, and more than half of the clubs have fewer than 100 students.

"The renewal rate of chess education is actually very good, at more than 60%, but due to the low social awareness of the industry as a whole, the student structure of some small and medium-sized clubs presents an inverted pyramid structure of 'more old students and fewer new students', which affects the long-term healthy development. The above-mentioned person in charge said.

Chess started relatively late on the mainland, and many players, although they are proficient, are not necessarily good at teaching. Therefore, the distribution of teachers in each city is uneven, and there is a lack of unified standards for teaching content and teaching processes.

Online technology makes up for the shortcomings

In this case, online chess education has a unique advantage.

First of all, the online live broadcast of large classes can maximize the coverage of excellent teachers. A single teacher can teach thousands of students at the same time, and educational institutions can "select the best of the best" and select a few famous teachers from a limited team of chess teachers, but they can already meet the teaching needs.

Secondly, online educational institutions innovate the teaching mode in accordance with the teaching law of "combining lectures and exercises". "Three-point learning, seven-point practice" is a characteristic of many quality education categories, and chess is no exception. Du Chunhui told the 21st Century Business Herald, therefore, Spark Chess has developed a "large and small class live broadcast" teaching model, professional coaches open large class live broadcasts for all students, explain theories and knowledge points, after the explanation is completed, the live broadcast authority will be handed over to the small class teacher, each teacher will open a small class live broadcast for less than 12 students, Xi practice the knowledge just taught and give guidance, as well as carry out teacher-student, student-student interaction, and then hand over the live broadcast authority to the professional coach for the next step of teaching.

This breaks the boundaries between traditional live online large classes and live online small classes. In fact, fields such as online programming education are also exploring the recombination of traditional online education models.

Third, AI technology allows students to have better human-computer game Xi tools. Back in 1996, the supercomputer Deep Blue challenged the world chess champion Kasparov for the first time, but lost 2:4. Soon after, the research team improved Deep Blue and challenged Kasparov again in May 1997, and Deep Blue won the sixth game.

Nowadays, many organizations in the industry have introduced human-machine training methods. "Online Xi is one of the important ways to practice, although the level of computers is getting higher and higher, and humans have been out of reach, but people can improve their level with the help of software, which is more convenient and affordable than finding real people." Xu Jialiang said.

Du Chunhui believes that the man-machine game should be designed in layers, for example, it can't come up to give the child a devastating blow, so that he can't get off the computer at all, but it should not let the child lose all the time, and he won't always win. "This requires the help of AI, and we will develop and build a more suitable game platform for children in the future. He said.

"In short, the online education model has great advantages for popularizing chess education, especially for initiation education. Du Chunhui said.

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