Robbie Harker

Orem Library hosts chess club

Craig Dilger – DAILY HERALD

The calm hush of the Orem City library lingers between the soft thuds of pawns and knights on rubber chessboards. The rhythm of thuds and the clinks of stolen pieces is interrupted every few minutes by a proud declaration of the word “check.”

• NINE-YEAR-OLD Robbie Harker sits behind the white pieces of one of the four games. He is propped up on one knee to get a higher vantage point of the game at hand. After a careful yet short moment of thought Harker moves his queen forward. He holds the tip of his finger on the piece as he scans the board before he commits to the move.

Robbie was first introduced to the game of chess by his father at the age of five. But Robbie wasn’t forced into the game or expected to excel immediately. He was given plenty of time to grow as a player and learn to enjoy the game and all of its complexities.

“First [my father] would have just his king and his two rooks,” explains Robbie. “He would have just a couple of pieces and then put more and more on the board as I got better. Now we are pretty equally matched. I guess that he has taught me all he knows so now I am as good as him. It doesn’t matter what age you are, someone who is 6 could be better than a 50 year old.”

Brian Harker won’t hesitate to agree that Robbie’s chess game has grown to equal, if not surpass, his own.

“I think he has a better sense for the game than me,” says Brian Harker. “He sees things about the game and its strategy that I still don’t get. The reason I win sometimes is that I have more experience, but he has a more intuitive sense of the game than me. He’s sure got a heck of lot more talent than I do.”

Robbie’s opponent this night at the youth chess club meeting at the Orem Library is Michael Doering, a man old enough to be Robbie’s grandfather. Doering, who volunteers every Thursday, doesn’t hold back and lets the young students at the chess club win matches. He wants the kids to know that when they grow to be able to beat him that they have beaten him “fair and square.”

Here is the full article.