Southbridge chess master makes move to be youngest-ever in US
By Brian Lee TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
SOUTHBRIDGE — Armine Sevian said she doesn’t want her 13-year-old son Sam solely focused on chess.
But Sam, an international master who’s closing in on becoming the youngest-ever U.S. grandmaster, said he can’t imagine life without chess and practices up to six hours a day.
His mother accompanies him to events around the globe, essentially Mrs. Sevian’s full-time job. She silently urges him on during his sometimes five-hour-plus duels.
The boy is one of 10 players competing in the 10-day, 2014 U.S. Junior Closed Championship at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis, which ends Sunday. He entered the tournament ranked second.
As of Thursday, Sam had split his first six games, with three more games to play.
The Sevians said it was doubtful Sam could make up enough ground to win the tournament, which is considered the country’s most prestigious event for the nation’s top players under 21….
Sam is rather shy with people he doesn’t know, his mother and a chess club spokesman said.
Asked to recap career highlights, or moves that surprised even him, Sam said matter-of-factly that they occur regularly, maybe once or twice a tournament.
Sam, who also plays basketball and soccer, and enjoys watching hockey, already has to his credit two grandmaster norms.
These are tournament performances against other grandmasters that essentially say the boy played as well as or better than grandmasters, Mike Wilmering, the chess club spokesman, said.
Sam needs three norms to become a grandmaster, as well as a chess rating of 2,500. Sam’s rating is about 2,450, Mrs. Sevian said.
Sam said he earned his first norm in January at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, and his second in recent weeks in St. Louis.
Mr. Wilmering said the current record for youngest U.S. grandmaster is Ray Robson (a sophomore at Webster University), who earned the title a few weeks before his 15th birthday.
Today’s St. Louis event is not a “norm” tournament.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Sevian said flights and hotel accommodations to get to various norm tournaments have become expensive as Sam has improved.
For starters, Sam has to win the tournament, and Mrs. Sevian said the grand prizes don’t net the “big money” of other sports.
So it’s usually not enough to cover traveling expenses.
“We hope it will pay off in the end,” she said.
Sam is home-schooled because the family estimates he would be absent from school 10 days a month to attend tournaments. No public school would consent to that, Mrs. Sevian said.
Sam’s 11-year-old sister, Isabelle, attends school.
Mrs. Sevian said, “Honestly, I’d rather Sam go to school, too.”
The plan, for now, is to indulge his interest in chess and see how far it takes him, his mother said.
Sam, whose favorite subject is math, said the most interesting place his chess abilities had taken him was the World Youth Chess Championships in Maribor, Slovenia, where he won the world championship of the 12-and-under age group in 2012.
Sam was born in Corning, New York. The Sevians have also lived in Florida and California, and moved to Southbridge last year because his father, Armen Sevian, took a job as principal scientist at IPG Photonics, a laser manufacturing company in Oxford.
Sam said his father, a native of Armenia, taught him how to play when he was very young and by 4 he was familiar with all the pieces.
At 5, Sam was attending a weekly chess club and played in small tournaments in Orlando. He placed second in a national event there, and this was when his parents decided he had talent and needed to continue, his mother said.
Getting to the boy’s chess tournaments on the East Coast factored into the decision to move from the West Coast, Mrs. Sevian said.
The family plans to move to Worcester or closer to the city during the summer, the mother said.
Southbridge is “fine,” much quieter compared to San Jose and Los Angeles, but Mrs. Sevian said she detests the 90-minute drive to Boston’s Logan International Airport, which is sometimes two hours with traffic.
Although they move often, they plan to remain in Central Massachusetts for a long time, Mrs. Sevian said.
Good luck!