Chess gives kids new ‘checkmates’

Chess gives kids new ‘checkmates’
By Marcy Miranda

Moving bishops, rooks and pawns around a chess board, kids as young as 5 years old were competing head-to-head with each other Saturday in one of the last citywide chess tournaments being held this year.

Students from kindergarten through eighth grade competed for team and individual trophies in Poudre School District’s chess tournament at Tavelli Elementary School on Saturday.

Ayden Adair, a fourth-grader at Werner Elementary, said he liked the challenge of chess and the handful of friends he has made by regularly competing in the tournaments.

“I like playing new people,” he said.

Ayden asked his mother to teach him how to play chess when he was in first grade after seeing a chess set in his classroom.

Playing was hard at first, Ayden, 9, said, but he continued improving and had been on a winning streak until Saturday.

Ayden’s mother, Lori, Werner’s chess club sponsor, said she likes the chess community that has been built from the competitions.

“They’ve made friends from other schools and they will know each other when they get to middle school,” Adair said. Having to compete against other team members also helps teach kids how to handle winning and losing without being brats, Adair said.

“It’s a healthy competition,” Adair said. “It gives them the sense of empowerment to know how to lose gracefully and win gracefully,” she said.

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