Chess popularity growing

Surprise: Chess popularity rising among Maine’s youth
More school teams are cropping up as young players compete for and win titles at both the state and national levels.
By Kelley Bouchard
Staff Writer

Oscar McNally scans the chess pieces and carefully considers his next move. One hand hovers above the board, fingers tracing various options that come to mind.

Finally, Oscar slides a bishop over a few squares and looks up at his patient opponent and friend, James Botting. The 10-year-old boys are focused, calm.

A few moves later, the game is over. James, cornered, cannot make a legal move.

“It’s a stalemate,” Oscar declares, using the technical term for a type of tie.

“You destroyed me,” James concedes, and begins setting up for another match.

Oscar and James are members of the chess club at the East End Community School in Portland, one of several new clubs in and around Maine’s largest city that are part of a surge in the game’s popularity across the state and around the globe.

In nearby Cape Elizabeth, 16-year-old Matthew Fishbein last month became the first high school student in Maine to achieve a national master’s rating. On March 9, he helped his team win its third state championship. And on Saturday, Fishbein will defend his individual scholastic title at the state championship tournament in Orono.

“It’s unprecedented,” said Andy Bryan, president of the Maine Chess Association, of Fishbein’s standing in the state and the nation.

Worldwide interest in the 1,500-year-old strategy game has spiked recently, fueled by technology, the Internet and the youthful charisma of another master – world champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway, who won the title in November as an estimated 1 billion people watched on TV and online.

A handsome 23-year-old, Carlsen often takes 30 minutes to make a move, slouches nonchalantly during interviews and readily admits to reading Donald Duck to unwind. He models high fashion, plays soccer and basketball, and has appeared on “60 Minutes” and “The Colbert Report.” He connects with fans via Twitter and Facebook, and in February he launched a YouTube channel and an iPhone app, Play Magnus, so fans can test their skills and maybe win a chance to play against him live.

“He’s a poster boy for the game and he’s generating a lot of interest,” said Bryan, who is the teaching principal and longtime chess coach at the Airline Community School in Aurora, east of Bangor.

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