Alaska

Q&A with Alaska’s highest-ranked chess player, Artem Ruppert
Published Monday, March 23, 2009

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reporter Amanda Bohman recently talked about chess, life and everything with Alaska’s highest-ranked chess player and six-time state chess champion, Artem Ruppert.

1) When did you learn to play chess and who taught you?

My father taught me the moves when I was around 5. It was the mid-1970s, a time of great chess enthusiasm around the world. Bobby Fischer became the chess world champion in 1972, ending a long-time Soviet/Russian chess domination. Generally, it is believed the best time to start teaching chess is between the ages of 5 and 7.

2) Did you take to it right away? Please explain.

I mostly watched my father playing against his friends and started asking why he was choosing certain moves. He would give me answers that were too complicated for child to understand. He started training me by giving home assignments daily before leaving the house for work. At first I did it very reluctantly before eventually getting hooked. At the end of the day, I had to report certain chess problems and solutions or at least explain my thinking when we’d go over the correct answer.

During the summer program in elementary school when I was 7, I signed up for the chess club, which started a 30-plus-year-long chess relationship/friendship with my future coach. Before long, I started going to the local university chess club, playing against adults in casual games and in tournaments. At that time, I discovered how much fun it is to outplay your opponents by using logic. Winning against adults is something that is almost impossible in any other sport for a child to do. All of a sudden, adults would take you seriously where otherwise they might look down at you and your opinion. People would seek you for games.

To keep my interest going and find me suitable opponents of my age, my parents signed me up for tournaments in the city of Novosibirsk (1.5 million people). It would take me one hour each way by bus to get there. I gradually started to climb up the ratings ladder and was a chess expert by the age of 12. (I was one of the best in town for several years for my age and bit older as well.) By that time, I became one of the best youth players in town and was a member of the regional team. We would go, by bus, train or then by plane, to compete in different cities in Russia for 7-10 days at a time. So pretty much all school vacations I was traveling, playing chess. And when the school year was on, I would play almost every weekend and sometimes once or twice in the middle of the week. During summers, we would go to faraway places to play in scholastic and adult tournaments.

Here is the full article.