Today’s cover of the St. Louis Post Dispatch
Organizers hope competitors here will be ambassadors for women in chess
6 hours ago • BY STEPHEN DEERE
Organizers hope young competitors at tournament here will act as ambassadors for women in chess.
WEBSTER GROVES • The four dozen girls sat under stage lights normally reserved for plays, and the clack, clack, clack of their time clocks made the auditorium at Webster University’s Loretto-Hilton Center sound like a massive popcorn popper.
Their faces, lit up with giggles only seconds earlier, were now masks of concentration, absorbed in countless chess computations.
It was as if someone had flipped a switch.
Despite the competitors’ intensity, the significance of the chess tournament — the ninth annual Susan Polgar Girls’ Invitational — could not be measured by who won or lost.
What matters most, at least to Polgar, is what happens once they go home.
Chess, after all, is still a game dominated by men.
And Polgar hopes that the girls, who have traveled here from all over the country, will return to their home states as ambassadors for women in chess.
It’s a role that many of the tournament participants — ranging in age from 6 to 18 — are likely unaware they are playing.
Polgar, who recently moved her Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence to Webster from Texas Tech University, has long been a pioneer for women in the game.
She grew up hearing that women couldn’t compete at the same level as men because their brains weren’t as large.
Still, she became the top-rated female player in the world at age 15, and in 1986 qualified for the Men’s World Championship, only to be rejected because of her gender.
Five years later, Polgar became the first woman to hold the title of grandmaster.
Today about two dozen women have earned that distinction, she said.
“I think we are on track for a huge improvement in my lifetime,” Polgar said.
It may seem strange that a woman who spent most of her chess career vying for equal footing with the opposite sex created a tournament that excludes it.
Polgar is well aware of the irony. As a player, she didn’t favor segregated competition. But that changed when she became a coach, she said.
She recognized that young girls often don’t feel comfortable playing against males.
“It’s a whole different ambience,” Polgar said about female-only competition.
Abdul Shakoor, a single father from Columbus, Ohio, agreed. Shakoor’s daughter Diamond, 11, recently won an elementary district chess championship.
He said that helped make her a target at other tournaments. In open competition, Shakoor said boys tried to make his daughter cry before matches.
This is Diamond’s third year in the tournament, and were it not for Polgar, she wouldn’t have made it here.
Abdul Shakoor said he had no way to bring his daughter to St. Louis, but Polgar asked another parent driving from New Jersey to pick them up.
Like most of the other players, Diamond Shakoor had long looked up to Polgar.
“They all want to be a grandmaster, just like Susan,” said Melissa Delgado, whose daughter Gisele, 6, was among the youngest at the tournament.
Neither Delgado nor her husband, Joe, plays chess. Their daughter became interested in preschool, said the couple, who are from Corpus Christi, Texas.
And even though they didn’t understand it, they could both see the impact chess has made in Gisele’s life.
It has boosted her confidence, introduced her to new people and helped her academically.
Melissa Delgado partly credited the game for Gisele skipping the first grade.
Locally, you don’t have to look far to see that chess is making headway among young girls.
Margaret Hua, 14, of Ballwin, is the tournament’s second seed. Asked about her chances of winning, Margaret didn’t think they were that good.
“I know a lot of the other players, and they are very good,” she said.
But that might have been a little too humble.
Tony Rich, executive director of the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis in the Central West End, remembered when Margaret first visited the club four years ago.
Away from the chessboard, Margaret resembled any other 10-year-old.
“We would have to tell her not to run around the club,” Rich said.
But when Margaret sat down to play, she had tremendous focus and discipline.
Since then, Margaret “has just skyrocketed,” Rich said.
So much so, that when Rich played Margaret in February, Margaret, then 13, beat him.
He still hasn’t gotten over the loss.
“It was really disappointing,” he said.
“She didn’t make any mistakes. I did.”
Source: http://www.stltoday.com
Go Gisele!