Chess is fun

8-year-old Palmdale girl is already chess champion
By Christina Villacorte, Staff Writer
Posted: 12/03/2011 01:00:00 AM PST

Giggling under a pink hat bedazzled with sequins, 8-year-old Gia Peterson scanned the chessboard, wiggled her fingers and declared triumphantly, "Checkmate."

Her opponent, a news photographer, never stood a chance.

The Palmdale second-grader is a national chess champion, dominating the K-3 age group in the prestigious Susan Polgar World Open for Boys and Girls in 2010 and 2011.

She placed third in 2009, her first year of competition.

She's also the youngest in the country to win a high school tournament at age 6.

The previous record-holder was a 7-year-old boy in 1987 - who happens to be her half-brother.

"It doesn't matter how old you are," Gia said on a recent afternoon.

"I can think up to 11 moves in advance."

During the last World Open, held near Chicago in October, she beat a rival whose coaches were both grand masters.

The match lasted no more than half an hour. The year before, Gia took home a grand prize that included a college scholarship.

Her father celebrated the feat.

"Gia has talked about becoming a doctor," said Richard Peterson, a former financial analyst and chess tutor who became disabled in 2003 after sustaining a brain injury when a trailer collapsed on him.

"In no way is chess the goal - it is just a tool for the kids to get to where they really want to go," Peterson added. "It trains their minds, gives them critical thinking skills, and that's something that's simply not taught in school."

Gia's siblings - 12-year-old Michail, 10-year-old Dante, and 6-year-old Jayani - also are accomplished players, even though the youngest is still learning how to read and write. They also have a half-brother and a half-sister, both adults who were national champions in their youth.

All four of them won trophies during a scholastic chess tournament in Ridgecrest, Kern County, last month. Their combined record: 19-0.

"Chess is fun," said Dante, a three-time regional champion in his age group, whose signature strategy involves taking over the space in a chessboard until his opponent has nowhere to go.

Dwight Morgan, who has organized children's chess tournaments in Ridgecrest for 40 years, considers the Peterson kids - particularly Gia and Dante - among the best he's seen at their age.

"A couple of tournaments ago, Gia won the high school section and bested boys and girls from ninth grade through 12th grade," he said. "It was quite something to see these tall kids, 13 to 18 years old, holding small trophies while the petite Gia, who was only 8, had the biggest trophy of them all."

"To see a young girl doing so well is really great for the sport as far as encouraging other girls," he added, noting boys have tended to dominate the game.

Gia and Dante are the most competitive in the family. They partnered once and outscored rival teams with four players each.

It was Dante who brought chess back into the household after his father's accident.

"I didn't want to play chess because the pain was just awful," Richard Peterson said. "Whenever I tried to concentrate, it would make my head throb."

Dante, then a kindergartner, pursued his chess passion on his own and eventually "dragged" his mother, Deepika, to local tournaments. Soon, she was taking the rest of the children as well.

"Dante really wanted to go, but I remember when (then preschooler) Gia first sat down to play, she was so scared of all the people around her that she started crying," Deepika said.

The owner of a trophy-making business, Deepika tried to comfort the children if they got upset after a loss by telling them, "If you want a trophy, I'll make you one."

She never actually resorted to creating those consolation prizes though, because the children soon started winning regularly.

They honed their chess skills by reading books, solving problems on an educational CD, and competing online with adults.

Despite all that, the children are well-rounded, getting A's at school and playing tag and other activities with their peers.

Their family room has a huge collection of trophies and medals in one corner. More awards are stored in boxes inside the garage.

Peterson, who began to recover from his brain injury in 2008, hopes those accomplishments will ensure a bright future for the children, though he hopes the game will not be the sole pursuit of their adult lives.

"We want chess to be an avenue to other things," he said.

Source: http://www.dailynews.com

Chess' greatest challenge: girls

Chess' greatest challenge: girls
The Virginian-Pilot

© October 2, 2011

By Lisa Suhay

In the world of chess, boys are always in, but U.S. Chess Federation numbers confirm girls are out the minute they hit the teens. Where is Heidi Klum when girls need her most? We need the fashion-forward players as model minds to keep girls in the game of chess rather than dropping out in droves as they reach puberty.

In fact, overall, chess is crying out for a fashion edit.

Of the 700 million chess players worldwide, 45 million are Americans. Half of those are children. Next Saturday, National Chess Day, will be a sad reminder that teen girls are losing an opportunity for a life map to critical thinking and scholarships.

We don't have to lose girl players to the Terrible Ts: Twitter, Twilight and tween angst. We can change the approach for girls and decrease their hasty exit.

Not surprisingly, of the 1,100 International Grandmasters in the world, only two dozen are women. The United States has only one - Susan Polgar, who is Hungarian-born and naturalized. Only 1 percent of the U.S. Chess Federation's adult membership is female.

Despite the fact that Heidi Klum, Christina Ricci, Sandra Bullock, Salma Hayak and Madonna all play, the stereotypical public image of chess is still one of stuffy exclusivity, populated by disheveled, older men with seriously quirky natures.

As an official IOC Olympic sport, chess makes curling look sexy.

It's a team sport. In high school, a student can letter in chess. As Norfolk's new superintendent of schools, Richard Bentley, embarks on the creation of a state chess league that will make that possible for students here, statistics show we will see those letters mainly on boys' jackets.

But after attending the five-day Susan Polgar Foundation Girls' Invitational in Lubbock, Texas, and staying in the dorms with the girls, I now have a better handle on how to help our girls here.

In five sleepless nights as I sat in the hallways packed with boards, clocks and girls ages five to 18, breathing in the scent of nail polish remover, I learned a lot about little girls who can tear you up on the 64 squares while painting their toenails ice blue, listening to an iPod, texting, singing, giggling, gossiping and munching apple chips.

It is both a humbling and mildly terrifying experience to have an adorable 6-year-old girl multitask and checkmate you into oblivion. Which I suspect is the reason behind the programs by the American Association of University Women, the Carnegie Center and others to get girls into science, technology, engineering and math. Ladies, we need to talk. Let's do coffee across a chess board and I think we can fix all our problems.

Even at the tournament, the girls were relaxed, happy and exchanging little tokens of esteem, very unlike the mixed boy/girl tournaments I have seen over the years where you can cut the gender anxiety and head-games with a battle ax.

If chess is going to be redesigned to be more girl-friendly, as experts like Dr. Alexey Root have suggested, it should start with non-rated girls' tournaments. Rating tournaments merely encourages a toddlers-in-tiaras-worthy conflict of superior and inferior labels. Girls don't need more labels. They're already coping with body-image hate, acne and boys.

To keep girls in, we need to focus on the game. To bring more boys and girls from our state into the game and build their critical-thinking skills, focus and life strategies, a group of community partners has formed, including: the NPS' superintendent, the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk State and Old Dominion universities, teachers, parents, The Virginian-Pilot and the Carnegie Math and Science Initiative for Girls. The group is called the Norfolk Initiative for Chess Excellence. That means we are N.I.C.E.

When people come to Norfolk, we will teach them to play the N.I.C.E. way, starting March 2-3 at Virginia's first-ever all-girl state chess championship. All Virginia girls ages 5-18 can enter for free, rated or unrated, and play for scholarships. And we will give a free chess-in-education seminar for teachers while the girls play.

We are going to send fun, free, unrated, rewarding chess down the runway and see how it scores.

Guest columnist Lisa Suhay runs a free community partnership - Norfolk Initiative for Chess Excellence (N.I.C.E.) in Virginia. Email: Lsuhays2@cox.net.

Source: http://hamptonroads.com