Meeting Grandmaster David Howell is always a pleasure and when I ran into him at a posh hotel in London the three-time British champion was looking both dapper and, particularly upbeat.
That was quite understandable. Firstly he was decked out in a dinner suit and, secondly, he was fresh from two stellar performances.
The first at the Isle of Man International saw David come within a speculative blow of landing a place at next year’s Candidates tournament and the other having won a bronze medal for England at the Euro Team Championships over in Georgia.
David was in the form of his life – something I heartily congratulated him on.
But England’s then number one – he’s since been overtaken by a resurgent Michael Adams – was to come crashing back down to earth when he came up against his toughest opponent yet: me and, more decisively, the element of chance.
David and I were at The Bloomsbury to trial an app for a new concept game called Choker, which is a hybrid between – you guessed it – chess and poker.
Fans of both pursuits (and I know there are plenty at this club) will love it. Here is a game designed primarily for fun rather than serious competition that fuses the analytical skills in chess with the bluff and bravado of poker.
To get your head around it, there are three distinct phases of the game. It starts with a hand of poker in which players are dealt cards from a set depicting pieces. Rounds of betting then follow – as in Texas Hold ‘Em – and after the usual bluff, you are left with your cards.
Can you become a Choker master?
But instead of the big reveal comes the next phase – the board game play-off. It is now down to the strength of your hand and your chess skill to finish off the game with the pieces you have and win the pot. As usual, checkmate ends the game.
For chess players, this is where you come into your own. First, you have to place your pieces on the board – and this appears to me to be the key skill.
When I played David, after the betting phase I ended up with a not insignificant material advantage… A queen, two rooks, a bishop and a pawn versus a pawn, two knights, a bishop and a rook.
They were duly placed on the board – his I am sure more intelligently – and then the chess phase began. From the outset, with an extra queen gained from the poker I was probably going to win – and eventually did on time.
However, what intrigued me was how tough it was to make decisions on piece placement, assess the unfamiliar position you have created and then play it. As there are no openings to memorise, after the pieces are put down calculation is absolutely key.
The makers describe Choker as a “Mixed Mind Sport” and the app online allows you to play chess pros and masters win tournaments, win rewards and rise up a global leaderboard.
The game itself was designed by Andrew Finan, who chess players may know as the man who ran the 1995 World Championships between Garry Kasparov and Vishy Anand at the top of the World Trade Center in New York.
But it also has the backing of several big names in the game – Hikaru Nakamura, who we know has more than dabbled with serious poker playing in the past, and Malcolm Pein to name just two.
Mr Finan explained: “Chess is just a structured game, there is no luck at all because all the information is on the board. So it is really impossible for a lesser player, like me, to be a grandmaster.
“But while most games have an element of luck, like dice or card games, chess is out there on its own. So what we’ve done is add an element of chance and risk-reward – so there is luck but it’s also calculated luck.
“The poker element makes you play the percentages and Lady Luck may smile on you and you may get great pieces which may allow you to beat someone who’s better than you, so it’s something that the casual player can really enjoy.
“In Choker you could end up with a casual player getting really good and ending up at the same table as a world champion. In chess that never, ever happens, and so what we have here is a game that levels things up and where you can have your day.”
And that, it seems, is what happened when I played David.
You can play Choker yourself on the free app available now in the Google Play and Apple stores here:
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.queenloop.choker
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chess-poker-choker/id1348844624?ls=1
