Knights, kings and queens take Rocky by storm
24 February, 2012 7:59AM AEST
By Alice Roberts and Jacquie Mackay
Over 130 primary and high school students from across central Queensland competed in the tournament.
Gardiner Chess Director of Operations Andrew Fitzpatrick says they run a series of chess tournaments throughout the year.
“We’re trying to find the champion team at the end of term three to go and represent each region in the state finals down in Brisbane for the Queensland Interschool Chess Championships,” he said.
He says chess provides more benefits to students than just entertainment.
“Obviously it’s very heavily linked with mathematics,” he said.
“In the NAPLAN in year three for example there’s a lot of grids and coordinates and chess is one big grid and coordinate.
“It also helps work on concentration, problem solving and it has even been shown to help English a little bit as well by studies showing an increase of up to 25 percent in maths and English overseas.
“On top of that, there’s also the social benefits so it teaches kids to lose and win with grace and also to be able to interact.
“We’ve seen a lot of autistic kids and kids with other learning problems be able to interact in a safe environment and really be able to get the benefits of interacting in a safe way.”
He says boys frequently outnumber girls at chess tournaments.
“For whatever the reason, the boys seem to see it as more of a battle so the boys do sort of dominate,” he said.
“Mackay is the region where we have the biggest female participation which is over 25 percent.
“It’s something that we would certainly like to increase but how to do that is another matter.”
Central Queensland Christian College grade 12 student Joshua Morgan says he originally started playing chess to get out of school but it quickly turned into a passion.
“Dad taught me how to play when I was about five or six and we played together for a while until I started beating him a lot and then he lost interest so it’s been maybe 10 years,” says Joshua.
He says attitudes towards chess have changed.
“The old mind set of chess was that it was a really nerdy thing to do but nowadays I think it’s changing a bit and it’s accepted as just a really good game of the mind,” he said.
He says a part from being a great social game, it’s also helped him in other areas of his life.
“I find that I’m a very strategic thinking person,” he said.
“Doing chess I just started playing a move by a move, now I can think five, six moves ahead in certain situations so you can anticipate your opponents moves.
“It’s helped with other things when you’re trying to figure out puzzles and stuff so it’s all very relevant.”
Source: http://www.abc.net.au
Great to see chess growth.