Board of Education : Youngsters Enjoy Mental Stimulation of Chess

If chess teams had locker rooms, they might look like this . . . six desks and thousands of reference books on the walls.

--Jay McInerney, “Bright Lights, Big City”

After 12-year-old Steve Newman saw an exhibition chess game at his Santa Ana elementary school last spring, he was so intrigued that he started taking private lessons. Since then, Steve’s life has revolved around chess--weekly private lessons to hone his skills, hours of solitary practice, books on the game’s fine points and weekend chess tournaments.

Today, one year and $1,500 in chess expenses later, Steve is a nationally rated chess player who won a respectable four out of eight games at the National Junior High School Chess Championships last month in Spokane, Wash.

Not since 1972, when Bobby Fischer became the first American to win the world championship, has chess been so popular among Orange County youth, said Dewain Barber, who is president and adult adviser of the Orange County Chess Assn. and who, with his wife, Susan, also a teacher, coaches the Buena Park Junior High School chess team.

The chess association, which is sponsored by the Orange County Department of Education, now has a record membership of 750 students in kindergarten through 12th grade at 35 county schools, added Barber, who teaches eighth-grade classes at Buena Park Junior High.

“Research has shown that the intellectual and thinking processes of youth are enhanced if they play chess,” Barber said, explaining why the county education department supports chess competitions.

Chess for Juniors, a Garden Grove organization that provides private lessons and arranges tournament trips for youngsters ages 7 through 15, has seen its membership jump from 20 to 100 since it was launched three years ago, said Robert Snyder, the group’s director.

Snyder, who is active in several chess organizations, estimates that 15,000 primary and secondary school students in the county play chess regularly. And a record 200 of them, he said, are nationally rated by the U.S. Chess Federation, the country’s governing body for the game.

During the summer, many city recreation departments offer chess classes for beginners. Top-notch youth chess players can be found in such unlikely places as shopping malls, holding challenge matches with shoppers for practice, Snyder said.

Chess fever has infected teachers at schools throughout the nation, Barber said. More and more are becoming interested in learning how to set up chess clubs at their schools.

To explain the nuts and bolts of chess club organization, Barber wrote the “Guide to School Chess.” It will be published this month by the U.S. Chess Federation, which plans to distribute free copies to 5,000 schools nationwide by fall.

Parents are so enthusiastic about their children playing chess that they are willing to pay local chess masters such as Snyder $28 a month for hourlong lessons once a week for their offspring.

Benefits of Playing

“Chess makes kids think things through on the chessboard, and it carries through to other things they do,” said Steve’s mother, Nancy Newman. She said that Steve has become more mature and that his intellectual ability has improved greatly since he took up the game a year ago.

As for who would be interested in taking up the game, “there’s this mistaken impression that chess is a game for smart people,” Barber said.

“If you’re not smart, you’re not supposed to be able to play,” Barber said. “Actually, chess players are as normal--as average--as anybody else. The only thing that makes them unique is that they play chess.

“At my school I’ve taught chess to kids ranging from those who are intellectually gifted to those with learning difficulties and handicaps.”

Snyder, echoing Barber’s views, pointed out that “competitive chess players lead surprisingly normal, everyday lives. Just because a kid plays chess doesn’t mean he doesn’t play football or some other sport.”

‘Like a Drug’ for Some

UC Irvine psychology professor and senior chess master William Batchelder, however, is not so sure that young chess players can be described as average youngsters who easily fit in with their classmates.

“I’ve never met a kid who radically accelerated up the chess ladder who wasn’t bright,” Batchelder said.

But having that ability is a mixed blessing, said Batchelder, who began playing chess at 12 and was Indiana state champion at 19. He now ranks among the top 1% of tournament players in the country.

“Some parents find that chess distracts their children from their schoolwork and preparing for careers,” Batchelder said. “For some kids, chess is like a drug--they’ll spend an unlimited amount of time on chess and their studies suffer.

“Chess players tend to be introverts and interested in things of the mind. You’ll rarely find a kid who’s a hotshot athlete and a hotshot chess player.”

Schedule Conflicts

Nancy Newman, however, disagrees: “Steve’s playing chess hasn’t conflicted with his schoolwork or his other activities. He’s still getting mostly A’s in school, and he still plays (youth league) basketball.”

In fact, so many chess club members are involved in spring sports that the Orange County Chess League, which sponsors chess tournaments among six high schools in the northern part of the county, had to repeatedly postpone its championship match last month between Buena Park and Sunny Hills high schools because of scheduling conflicts with sporting events, said chess league President Stan Tinkle.

However, Batchelder maintains that “chess players get out of the game that emotional rush from competition that they can’t get out of athletics, either because they’re not good at sports or aren’t interested in athletics.”

“There’s a theory by anthropologist Jack Robertson that says that kids will participate at games at one of three levels,” he continued. “According to this theory, people start out participating in athletic games; if they’re successful, they’ll stay at that level. If not, they move on to intellectual type games like checkers, backgammon, chess--and stay at that level if they’re successful. Those who are unsuccessful will move on to games of chance, where neither physical nor intellectual abilities are factors.”

As to the view that competitive youth chess players may have difficulty fitting in socially with their peers, Batchelder said: “If a chess player has other virtues that make him attractive as a friend, then he’ll have no problems being accepted. His friends will even look up to him because of his chess ability.

“If a person is a social misfit, but a great chess player, then obviously he’s not going to be looked up to by his peers. He’s a nerd--not because he plays chess but because he’s a nerd in other things he does.”

Positive Experiences

A sampling of Orange County youngsters named by their coaches as among the better competitive youth chess players in the county said their interest in chess sometimes had forced them to give up sports or other activities. They said they encountered few instances of ostracism, however.

Though Aaron Friedman has played chess only a year, he is nationally rated, having played in 10 major tournaments, including the statewide tournament last fall that pitted Northern against Southern California teams. Aaron’s team placed first among those competing at the fourth-grade level.

Although he practices five days a week, Aaron, a fourth-grader at El Camino Real Elementary School in Irvine, said he still gets mostly A’s. Chess has forced him to to give up soccer and baseball, he said, but he plans to sign up for the school swim team next fall.

“Chess is not that popular at my school,” Aaron acknowledged. Sometimes his schoolmates tease him, but their ribbing seldom bothers him, he says.

Sam Bhushan, a sixth-grader at Imperial Elementary School in Anaheim Hills, has garnered 20 first-place tournament trophies, medals and ribbons since learning chess from his grandfather while still in kindergarten.

‘My Friends Play It’

“I dropped soccer because I like chess more,” Sam said. He takes private lessons one hour a week, studies every book on chess he can find, practices about one hour a day and plays in tournaments most weekends.

“Chess is fun, and a lot of my friends play it,” Sam said, explaining the game’s appeal. “And there’s no physical work; you just think.”

Chess commitments don’t interfere with school, where, Sam said, he gets A’s and B’s. Sam said his classmates don’t consider his involvement with chess unusual because he’s in a class for gifted children, where attainments such as chess mastery are admired.

However, “there are a lot more boys than girls in chess,” Snyder said, noting that boys generally outnumber girls playing the game by a 10-to-1 ratio. “Society looks on chess as a war game,” he said, by way of explaining the disparity.

“Girls, when they are smaller, are not encouraged to play war games because of cultural influences and peer pressure.”

Girls who do, however, “do fairly well,” Snyder said. Among the better female players in the county, Snyder said, is Leila Khatib, 14, an eighth-grader at Brookhurst Junior High School in Anaheim, where she is an A student.

‘So Mental’

For her part, Leila surmises that “boys like chess because they like logical things. Girls aren’t much into long, thinking-out processes. Girls are more social and not so competitive.

“Not many of my girlfriends play it,” she continued. “But they don’t think my playing chess is strange. They think it’s kind of neat.”

Although Leila began playing only last August, she is already nationally rated. “It’s really a fun game,” she said. She said she had lost interest in karate and softball and was looking for a new activity when she was introduced to chess during an exhibition game at her school.

“It’s so mental. . . . It makes you think about your moves in advance. You don’t have to repeat yourself over and over again.”