5-year-old takes chess seriously

5-year-old takes chess seriously
12:30 AM, Dec. 29, 2011

ANNISTON — Harper Hall hasn’t entered kindergarten but he’s already able to conquer some adults on the chess board.

On a November evening at his grandparents’ White Plains home, Harper, who is 5, matched up against 32-year-old Stephen Cain, a family friend. Playing atop a coffee table in the living room, Harper’s eyes zigzagged across the chess board as they loomed above the horizon of his chubby forearms.

Slowly, Cain’s white pieces disappeared from the board as Harper collected them one by one. Eventually, Harper drove Cain’s king into a corner.

Cain was beaten. Harper, victorious.

“I knew I had you checkmated,” Harper said and then laughed. “I was just playing it out.”

Harper began playing chess months ago when he was 4. His mom, Regan Hall, said he became curious about the game after spotting chess pieces and eyeing the opposite side of the family checkerboard, which doubles as a chess board.

“I showed him how the pieces move and he started beating me,” Regan Hall said. “He just kind of gets it.”

His mom said she has no explanation for her son’s ability. According to her, no other family members have such a keen sense of the game.

According to Bill Hall, executive director of the United States Chess Federation, success in chess is unusual, but not unheard of, for children Harper’s age.

“I would say it sounds definitely more advanced than normal,” Hall said when briefed by a reporter on Harper’s ability.

Hall said very few children play chess at age 4, and that it is more common for children to begin playing the game at age 5. But it’s not until years later, at 7 or 8, that most children “start showing some real significant promise.”

In October Harper entered his first chess tournament, a fundraiser for Children’s Hospital at Brookwood Village in Birmingham. There, playing as one of the youngest members in the kindergarten-through-third-grade division, Harper won three of five games.

He has since played in two more tournaments, one in Pelham where he won four of six games and one at Bumpus Middle School where he won three of five.

Full article here.