Grinnell tournament crowns state chess champions
by Walt Winston, KGRN, Grinnell
Some three-dozen of Iowa’s best chess players faced off in Grinnell over the weekend in the Iowa State Chess Association tournament. Out of 38 competitors, the winner was Jared Shaw of Coralville who explains his final moves in the championship game to capture the title.Shaw says he forced a rook trade and took his opponent’s rook for a queen promotion, which ended in a resign. Shaw says he’s been playing the strategy game since he was eight years old and he’s self-taught. He favors the knights for their ability to jump. Charles Li of Ankeny placed second, Rich Newell of West Des Moines came in third, with Tim Carson of Eldora in fourth.
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CHESS
By Lubomir Kavalek
Washington Post
Monday, April 10, 2006; C12
Earlier this month, the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) won the President’s Cup, the chess version of the Final Four. The defending champions scored nine points in 12 games, a full point ahead of their chief rival and the event host, University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). Miami-Dade College finished third with five points. Duke University was last with two points. The UMBC team achieved this success without its usual top board, the new U.S. champion Alexander Onischuk, who was playing in Russia. The team’s new leader, Pawel Blehm, a grandmaster from Poland, performed excellently with two wins and one draw. Other UMBC players were IM Pascal Charbonneau, Bruci Lopez, Katerina Rohonyan and Beenish Bhatia……
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Chess championship builds camaraderie, confidence
1,100 young people compete at Galt House
By Scheri Smith
The Courier-Journal
Stevan Kriss stared intently at the chessboard yesterday while contemplating his next move in a match at the National Junior High Chess Championship.
Stevan, an 8-year-old from Versailles, won that match.
“There’s all skill involved,” he said. “There’s no luck.”
He was one of more than 1,100 young competitors at the Galt House during the weekend for the event. Chess players, both individuals and teams, ranged from kindergartners to ninth-graders.
The competition, which began Friday and ended yesterday, is sponsored by the U.S. Chess Federation, which has about 90,000 paying members. More than 100,000 players participate each year in events the federation sponsors.
Players were accompanied to the competition by parents and coaches.
Dennis Manrique of Detroit brought seven players from Detroit’s Ludington Magnet School.
Manrique, a former swimming and water polo coach, said chess is great for young people.
“They get to meet all kinds of kids from all over the country” at events like the one in Louisville, he said.
Stephen Chunn, 12, one of Manrique’s players, said chess is a lot like life.
“There are good opportunities and bad opportunities,” said Stephen, a seventh-grader. “There can be things you can capture, and some things you can’t. Sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t.” ………….
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Warrensville Heights’ chess champions
Monday, April 10, 2006
Angela Townsend
Plain Dealer Reporter
Warrensville Heights has more than its share of chess wizards.
Warrensville Heights High School’s six-member chess team captured first place last month in the reserve division of the Ohio High School Chess Championship tournament. And Randallwood Elementary’s team mastered the same feat in its division last month.
Three members of the high school team – Alaina Powell, Ashley Cloud and Kellie Ross – were on the Warrensville Heights Middle School team when it was featured in a Plain Dealer article in 2002, shortly after winning first place in the Ohio Scholastic Chess Association All-Girls Tournament.
The students still display the love of the game that Randallwood teacher Steve Payten instilled in his young players when, as a teacher at the middle school, he revived the club in fall 2001. Now a new crop is following in those students’ footsteps.
The reserve division is made up of players who haven’t amassed enough points from tournament play to compete in the more prestigious “open” division.
“Considering that they’re not devoting a huge amount of their lives to chess, this is a pretty huge accomplishment,” said tournament director Michael Joelson, a national chess master.
What perceptions do people have about you because you play chess?
Junior Cloud, ranked fourth in the state: Everyone thinks that you must have brains, you must be smart and have a lot of patience.
Do you have all of that?
Yeah……….
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254 students compete in chess contest
April 10, 2006
Free Press Staff Report
The 19th annual Vermont Scholastic Chess Championships were held Saturday at Camels Hump Middle School in Richmond.
A total of 254 chess players competed.
The winning high school team was Fair Haven Union High School. Essex High School came in second; Twinfield Union High School in Marshfield was third; and Trinity Baptist School in Williston was fouth. The winning middle school team was Mater Christi School in Burlington.
The high school division had 57 competitors. Dillon Russell Kenniston and Oliver Chase, both of Fair Haven Union High School, tied for first place. Man Nguyen of Burlington High School took third, Haizhou Xu of Essex High School was fouth and Brandon Pierce of Twinfield was fifth…. 
Maybe this is blasphemous, but I’ve gotten to thinking that maybe it is less important to produce world class grandmasters than it is to introduce many people to its pleasures at a more modest level of skill. Maybe none of the players at these events will become a GM, but if they enjoy the game for a lifetime, so what?
Mabye if homegrown talent did not have to compete with foreigners for those rare chess scholarships to universities, then it might inspire more Americans to take up chess. As a homegrown person, you already have a lot of that nerd stigma if you play chess. It’s hard to get good in chess in America. Hopefully some of the American students can get scholarships to chess for other countries, because they are so rare over here.