Mastering the Moves : Chess: Junior high students are preparing for a national competition in Utah.

English teacher Steve Hughes was discouraged when only three students attended his first chess team meeting at San Fernando Junior High School in the fall of 1988.

But Hughes, a first-year teacher at the time, says he was determined to bring chess to this largely Latino, blue-collar neighborhood.

Interest in the game had kept him from dropping out of high school, said Hughes, who went on to become president of the UCLA Chess Club.

“Being a good chess player told me I was smart, that I had a brain and I could succeed,” said Hughes, who barely had a C average at El Toro High School but won the Western High School chess championship as a senior.

“I am a product of chess.”

Hughes said he believes that chess can also work its magic in San Fernando, a city where six of 10 children fail to earn a high school diploma. Schools in the city are part of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

After beating the bushes for players--posting bulletins, giving demonstrations and persuading students to try the game--his theory may have a chance to be proven.

The San Fernando Junior High chess team now numbers about 80 lunchtime regulars--many of whom had never seen a chess game before joining. After competing in five tournaments this year, the team is starting to earn a reputation as an up-and-coming chess power. The team finished second this year in the Southern California junior high school chess tournament. Twenty-five of the team members are rated by the U. S. Chess Federation, the game’s official governing body.

“We’re the new kids on the block,” Hughes said.

Ten of the school’s top players, along with a team from David Griffith Junior High School in East Los Angeles, will represent the Los Angeles area this weekend in a national junior high school chess tournament in Utah. More than 1,500 players from 150 schools nationwide are expected to attend.

“I like it because it makes you think,” said Ismael Jimenez, 15, the team’s No. 1 player. “You get smarter and you feel smarter.”

Team member Jimmy Arredondo, 14, said he learned how to play chess after joining the team in the fall. Then he had to raise his grades in English and history to stay on the team.

“It’s helped me because Mr. Hughes says you can’t be on the chess team unless you have good grades,” Arredondo said.

During a last-minute strategy session Tuesday, Hughes diagrammed moves on a simulated game board in the front of his classroom. On the walls behind him are posters of celebrated chess masters such as Bobby Fischer, world champion from 1972 to 1975, and the Soviet Union’s Anatoly Karpov, who reigned from 1975 to 1985.

After setting up a game in progress, Hughes peppered his 10 traveling team members with questions: What are you going to do with this rook? Can we play this safely? How would this pawn be attacked?

The students yelled back their answers. Afterward, the students, who say they play nearly every day, talk confidently of chess strategies such as the Indian Defense, the Queen’s Gambit and the Dutch Defense.

The San Fernando students will need all of those strategies for the three-day national tournament, which begins Friday at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City. Each student will play seven games to earn team points in the tournament.

“I’m looking forward to the competition,” said team member Daryl Allen, 14.

But no matter how well they place, the students are already winners, Hughes said. Team members earned more than $4,000 selling candy bars to pay for the trip, as well as to buy chess games, timers and team jackets.

“If we can transfer the same motivation from chess to academics, and I think we can, we can really build something here,” school Principal Maria Reza said.