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Local girls taking their
best chess moves to Greece
06:07 PM
CDT on Wednesday, October 27, 2004
By
NANCY CHURNIN / The Dallas Morning News
Hailey Winston was just 4 when she watched, fascinated,
as her older brother learned to play chess so he could
join a club at his new school.The Dallas preschooler
begged her parents to sign her up for a chess camp that
summer even though the minimum age was 7. Her brother, now
13, gave up chess long ago for the joys of baseball and
water polo. But Hailey, now 9, had found her passion. She
and three other Texas girls will attend the 2004 World
Youth Chess Championships Nov. 3-14 on the island of Crete
in Greece.
"I really like the strategy and the planning and
figuring out how to do things so your opponent can't get
you," Hailey says. "I love the tactics. It's so exciting
when you catch something your opponent missed."
Hailey, a fourth-grader at The Hockaday School, will be
playing in the Under 10 category, as will Ivana Santos,
10, of Paredes Elementary in Brownsville. Gayatri Vempati,
11, a sixth-grader at Frankford Middle School in Dallas,
and Anjali Datta, 12, an eighth-grader at Cross Timbers
Middle School in Grapevine, will play in the Under 12.
They will be among 28 from the United States competing
with about 1,000 kids from 90 countries.
To qualify, players must be one of the three
highest-rated candidates in the previous 12 months in five
age groups separated into boys and girls categories. And
while 90 percent of chess players are boys, Texas will be
sending only girls this year.
"This is a good sport for girls," says Gayatri, whose
sister, Amita, is a whiz herself. Amita, 14, earned a
four-year scholarship at the University of Texas at Dallas
for winning the Texas State Girls High School
Championship.
"Also, it's really cool because you get to meet people
interested in chess and math and stuff," Gayatri says. "I
make a lot of friends."
For Anjali, this will be a return trip. She was a
member of the 2002 U.S. team when she played in the Under
10 group. That year, she ranked 33rd. Like Gayatri, she
looks forward not only to the game, but also to spending
time with her friends. She's excited about possibly
playing against a girl from Slovakia she met at the last
world championship.
"We've been speaking through e-mail," she says. "She's
learning English."
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Posted on Sun, Jan. 19, 2003 |
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Chess teaches teen-ager lifetime
worth of lessons
By Allyson Reynolds
Dixon
Special to the
Star-Telegram
DALLAS
- Nate Conrad is only 14, but already he has
learned a lot about strategy.
He's learned that attending college is important to getting
ahead in life. He's learned that extracurricular activities
play a key role in getting into the college of his choice.
He's also learned that playing chess can be a key part of
his life strategy. In December, Conrad helped lead the St.
Mark's School of Texas ninth-graders to a national team chess
championship at the 2002 K-12 Grade Chess Championships,
sponsored by the U.S. Chess Federation in Atlanta.
St. Mark's is a private college preparatory school in
Dallas on Preston Road that offers classes for students in
first- through 12th-grades.
The team, which includes Christian Leppert, 15, and Jared
Forbus, 14, beat 18 other teams for the title.
"Chess is really fun, and it helps kids get into colleges
easier," Conrad said. "A lot of schools look at your
extracurricular activities."
Conrad's father taught him to play chess when the teen was
very young. Once the boy progressed to the point he could beat
his brother, who is six years older, he said he felt that he
was pretty good.
Conrad has been taking private lessons from Noureddine
Ziane for about three years. Ziane also teaches at St. Mark's
and coaches the school's chess team.
Ziane said playing chess is good for young people because
there is so much they can learn from the game.
"Besides the competition and all of that, chess teaches you
discipline," Ziane said. "It teaches you time management and
critical thinking. Many of the aspects of chess are things you
can apply to life."
During the tournament, each player had 1 1/2 hours to play
each game. Conrad said that even though the games last three
hours, time passes quickly. Conrad had the highest score on
his team by 1/2 point and finished the tournament with a 4-1-1
record.
"It's interesting because you try and see what's going to
happen so you can make better moves," he said. "It helps to
have strategy so they don't win stuff."
The St. Mark's ninth-graders will compete in the spring at
the national middle school championship.
Chess is played throughout the world, but its exact origins
aren't known. According to some researchers, terra cotta
pieces excavated from Mesopotamia of 6000 B.C. were used in
chess. In the Middle Ages, a Dominican friar wrote a chess
treatise. Known as the game of kings, chess gained popularity
in the 18th century, but the first modern international
tournament was not played until 1851 in London, according to
the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.
Conrad and Ziane attribute the game's popularity and
longevity to the skill and concentration required to beat an
opponent. Conrad said anyone who hasn't played chess should
give the game a try.
"You should just see if you like it," he said. "But it
takes patience because a game can take awhile. And you've also
got to be able to concentrate well." |
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St. Mark's
checkmates chess kings
12/21/2002
David took down Goliath all right – but with a
rook, not a slingshot.
Freshman Nate Conrad pulled off a major upset
last weekend in Atlanta to give St. Mark's School
of Texas ninth-graders the national team chess
championship.
The team – Nate, Christian Leppert and Jared
Forbus – beat out 18 teams, even the traditional
powerhouse schools of New York City.
On the tournament's final day, the team
standings were so close that it all came down to
Nate's final match. He faced an imposing foe: a
New Yorker rated 330 points higher in chess's
complex ranking system.
"That's like me going up against the world
champion," said St. Mark's coach Noureddine Ziane,
no chess slouch.
After an epic three-hour struggle, Nate pulled
out the victory, giving St. Mark's the title.
Joshua Benton
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With chess pro's help,
UP students learning all the right moves
11/20/2002
By
LEIF STRICKLAND / The Dallas Morning News
Noureddine Ziane pulled up to University Park
Elementary School at 6:56 a.m., a man on a mission. A
bag was in one hand, a board in the other.
It was a chessboard, and his purpose was simple.
Early every Thursday, kids assemble in the
cafeteria and media room of University Park Elementary
to play chess. Mr. Ziane's job is to teach the kids to
polish their games – or to learn the basics.
The Moroccan chess pro has been doing it for two
years, and he's been working with
elementary-school-aged kids since 1993. At the start
of the year, he said, many of the beginning students
didn't even know what chess was. Now they know all of
the moves – even complicated ones like castling.
"Many of them progress extremely quickly," he said,
"even faster than adults."
During his most recent visit, the 27-year-old
instructor started by coaching the advanced team.
About 15 boys and girls sat around a large T-shaped
table in a room with computers in one corner and a
world map draped over a wall.
He placed the large chessboard on an easel and
began recounting a famous game in 1858 between chess
master Paul Murphy and an amateur.
"Paul Murphy walks into a club and someone says,
'You're Paul Murphy – the best chess player ever!' "
Mr. Ziane shouted with a wide smile.
The point of the exercise, Mr. Ziane explained, was
to guess Murphy's moves in response to the other
player's. The kids could make no more than 10
mistakes. "You have to guess all of the moves before
you're out of lives," he said.
As Mr. Ziane made the moves for black, the kids
hazarded guesses for white – Murphy's color. After
each move, the youngsters cheered as if they were
watching football.
"Knight to G5?" one boy called out halfway through
the game, immediately soliciting a chorus of "yes!"
and "no!"
"You're going deep into the forest of doubt!" Mr.
Ziane egged them on.
It turned out the boy was right.
"Please don't beat me up at recess if I'm wrong,"
another boy yelled after making a guess that turned
out to be wrong.
By the final two moves, the class erupted in cries
and yelps. With one life remaining, they won. Later,
Adam Weber and Christopher Smith chatted about the
game.
How did they like being a part of chess club?
"We like it, but we don't like having to wake up at
6 a.m.," Adam, 8, said.
"I don't care about that," Christopher, 9,
retorted. "My mom gets me doughnuts."
Amy Hughes, the parent coordinator of University
Park Elementary's Chess Club, said she has trouble
keeping up with the more advanced kids.
"They love it so much," she said. |
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Chess Champion -- Fort Worth boy, 12, brings home confidence and a national trophy
Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2000
By Michelle Melendez
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
FORT WORTH -- Bryan Pernes is a typical 12-year-old -- freckle-faced, shy, proud of his trophies. His dream is to attend a chess college. He just hopes that it also has a football team.
On Sunday, he won the National Scholastic Seventh Grade Chess Championship in Orlando, Fla. The tournament is sponsored by the U.S. Chess Federation and featured 1,500 school-age players from 35 states. The competition was stiff -- a hotel ballroom full of the nation's best young chess players quietly plotting their moves. Only the top 10 in each grade took home trophies.
Bryan, a seventh-grader at William James Middle School's Special Interest Program, won five games and also played to a draw in one against the boy who beat him last year. Bryan came away with the title and a 3-foot-high, glittering green and gold trophy.
But more than that, chess has given him confidence.
"I'm one of the top kids in the U.S.A. in my age group," he said proudly. Bryan was the Texas state co-champion for 11-year-olds last year and has placed well in many tournaments.
His mother, Sharon, said family friends cannot believe how much Bryan has changed since he started playing chess four years ago.
"It's taken you out of your shell," she said to him.
And younger siblings and friends are also in awe of the "young master." Sister Meagan, 11 and brother Tyler, 9, welcomed him home with handmade posters depicting the Pernes family as chess pieces.
Now that he is a national champ, Bryan jokes that he might start charging more than $10 an hour for weekly lessons he gives a kindergartner.
Besides, teaching a 5-year- old is really hard, he said.
"Half the time he wants Oreos. I have to tell him, `If you do this, I'll give you one,' " he said.
It wasn't long ago that Bryan's father, Tim, was the teacher and Bryan was the antsy student. Rules of the game still hang on the family's living room wall. Four chess sets sit neatly stacked in special cases on a dining room shelf.
Training for a big tournament like the one he won last week involves lessons for an hour and a half every day from coach Noureddine Ziane of Plano. Bryan still plays his dad, and even wins occasionally. Tim Pernes is president of the Fort Worth Chess Club, which meets weekly at Borders bookstore on Hulen Street. They also compete at the Dallas Chess Club and sometimes win money.
Bryan said the biggest payoff would be a scholarship to the University of Texas at Dallas, which is known as a chess school. But it doesn't have a football team.
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PAWN BROKER
Chess coach shows young students all the right moves
By David Flick Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning
News
Published December 16, 1999
Click here to go back to results. |
| The question Noureddine Ziane posed to his first- and
second-grade chess students elicited quick hand-raising. Then, in the competition
to be noticed, hands were wagging two at a time. His question: "How many moves do
we move the king when we castle?"
As he paused to pick out a student, some stood up to be noticed. Some jumped up and
down impatiently.
"Two!" one finally burst out.
"Oh, this is so easy," another said aloud.
The classes at St. Mark's School of Texas were one of a series Mr. Ziane teaches at
Dallas-area schools, in addition to $40-an-hour private sessions.
In the process, he has coached five students onto the U.S. Chess Federation's
Top 50 list of student chess players, with four more expected to join them when the
list is updated in February.
At the Texas Grade Championships in October, nine of his individual students and two of
his teams placed first or second. Three of his students placed first or second at the
National Grade Championships in Louisville, Ky.
Not bad for someone not a year out of college.
Mr. Ziane, 24, a native of Morocco, graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas in
May.
Unlike his students, some of whom started playing chess as young as 3 years old,
Mr. Ziane started late. He was 13.
"I was at a youth center in Tangier playing basketball," he said. "There
were people playing chess there, and I started watching them."
By age 15, he won the Moroccan Junior Championship. Three years later, in 1993, he came
to Rochester, N.Y., as an exchange student and the next year won the New York high school
championship. He eventually went to UTD on a chess scholarship and graduated with a
bachelor's degree in computer science.
Although he has adult students, Mr. Ziane specializes in teaching children. His
challenge is to keep the Internet generation interested in the ancient - and distinctly
low-tech - game of chess.
"At the beginning, they just want to move the pieces as fast as they can," he
said. "But the more they learn, the more they get pleasure from the challenge and
from strategizing."
Dean Butler, 7, a first-grader at St. Mark's agreed.
"It's more fun than video because it makes you think of a lot of stuff at
once," he said.
Dean, one of Mr. Ziane's best students at St. Mark's, recently won an areawide match
and credits his coach for his success.
"He's really, really good," Dean said.
The lessons are enough to challenge any child's attention span. Katie Stone, Mr.
Ziane's wife and business partner, said students are required to study chess for
several hours a week, in addition to taking the weekly lessons.
"These kids know that after they do their school work, then they have to turn to
their chess work," she said.
Doing that work can be more important than natural talent, Mr. Ziane said.
"Chess is about 90 percent studying and the rest maybe is talent," he
said. "You can have talent, but the guy who puts in the practice will beat you."
Among his students is Bryan Pernes, 12, whose parents drive him once a week from
southwest Fort Worth for lessons at Mr. Ziane's home in north Plano.
"It's a sacrifice, but it's worth it," said Bryan's mother, Sharon Pernes.
She said Mr. Ziane knows how to keep younger students interested and is able to shape
their attitudes, as well as their skills.
"With him, it isn't just about learning chess," she said.
Her husband, Tim, is an accomplished chess player himself who also takes lessons
from Mr. Ziane - but who may soon be outdistanced by his son.
"He can beat my husband about two out of every four times," Ms. Pernes said.
Mr. Ziane said such experiences are common.
"Parents start off learning quicker, but after a month, the kids pass them up and
keep on learning," he said. "Most parents cannot keep up with them.
"They'll play a game and the kids will beat the pants off them."
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