Finneran wins again

Chess champ takes state title again
ANDREW BROPHY

FAIRFIELD — Michael Finneran’s hands move quickly over the chessboard when he analyzes games from the 2008 Connecticut State Chess Championship.

Michael, an eighth-grader at Tomlinson Middle School, knows why his opponents play certain moves — but he also knows why they didn’t play moves that look just as good.

The complications that can arise on a 64-square chessboard are well within Michael’s intellectual grasp.

“It’s a really advanced mind game, and I’m pretty good at mind games. It’s pretty fun for me, in a way,” he said.

On March 9, Michael confirmed his standing as the best middle-school chess player in the state by winning all five of his games at the Connecticut State Chess Championship, which took place at Yale University’s Payne Whitney Gymnasium. He first won the title as a seventh-grader last year.

“He’s clearly our hardest-working student,” said Mike Amori, co-owner of the Westchester Chess Academy in Rye, N.Y., where Michael has taken weekly lessons since June 2006. “He spends a lot of time studying the game. His self-study is incredible.”

Twenty-nine middle-school students competed in the championship, and a total of 312 chess players from around the region competed in different categories, according to Jim Celone, the tournament’s organizer.

Michael said he devotes from eight to 12 hours a week to chess. Jack Finneran, his father, said his son learned how to play chess three-and-a-half years ago and has competed in 23 tournaments so far. “Typically, kids at this level have played in 100 tournaments and they’ve been playing since they were 5 and 6,” Jack Finneran said.

Michael said his neighbor, Tony Fitsch, taught him how to play the game when he was a fifth-grader at Mill Hill Elementary School. He then joined an after-school chess program at the school.

Over the next three-and-a-half years, he learned to play good opening moves, strategy and tactics, and how to convert an advantage in the endgame to victory.

Michael plans to compete in the Connecticut State Chess Championship’s high school division next year and wants one day to be a grandmaster, the highest title a chess player can achieve.

Amori said Michael has the intelligence and motivation to become a grandmaster, but it will require him to play in a lot of tournaments.

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