10 or 20 out of 200

Riverside girl wins scholarship to Texas university with chess skills

07:04 PM PDT on Thursday, August 7, 2008
By JENNIFER DEAN
The Press-Enterprise

Growing up playing in chess tournaments, 17-year-old Nisha Deolalikar, was always surrounded by boys.

“In a room with say, 200 boys, there’d be 10 or 20 girls,” Nisha said.

But competing in the Susan Polgar National Invitational for Girls last week, Nisha finally got to play in a room full of fellow female chess players.

Nisha, a Riverside resident and Poly High School senior, began playing chess in second grade. At the time, the Deolalikar family lived in Seattle, where chess clubs and scholastic tournaments were common throughout the region.

They moved to Riverside when Nisha began seventh grade. The family found that scholastic tournaments weren’t common in the areas, so Nisha and her younger brother Sunil began playing in adult tournaments.

During a tournament last May, she earned the honor of representing the state of California at the tournament, which was hosted by Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.

One female chess player from each state in the nation gathered at the university July 27-Aug 1.

“There were six games, one every day,” Nisha said.

Contestants played all the rounds and the pairings were based on a point system.

“I actually lost the first round, so in the second round, I played someone who lost the first round also,” she said.

At the end of the tournaments Nisha tied for fourth place, but due to the scholarship rules, she still walked away with a full ride to Texas Tech worth $75,000.

Source: The Press Enterprise