The King Of Illinois Chess

We have a teenage chess whiz in our midst, and he is someone you should know.

Robert Moskwa, a Prospect junior and a native of Poland, has played competitive high school chess for two years, and he is regularly beating students who have been playing the game since they were in grade school.

He also has been beating his coaches at Prospect, Don Barrett and Vince Hart, a fact they freely admit, as an example of their admiration for him.

He exploded suddenly onto the IHSA’s biggest chess stage last week when he won the first place medal at the 2012 state tournament in downstate Bloomington. He is the first junior at Prospect to achieve this feat, and he led the Knights to a 16th place finish as a team.

He won the top prize among 1,200 students playing on 125 teams at state.

The Illinois High School Association calls chess an “activity,” and not a “sport.” I tend to think of it as a sport, because it is a competitive intellectual activity. It doesn’t require a strong body or fast legs, but it definitely requires a quick, analytical mind, and excellent decision making skills.

Moskwa himself agrees.

“It’s a beautiful, game, almost an art,” he says. “But it’s very competitive, and I enjoy the intellectual challenge of the competition.”

Moskwa came to the United States and the Chicago area with his family when he was in sixth grade, about five years ago. He initially learned the game from his mother, and soon began playing with friends who shared his interest.

“I played soccer and chess at South Middle School when I first came here, and I still enjoy both activities,” he says.

He joined the Prospect freshman soccer team in the fall of 2009, but it wasn’t long before he sought out opportunities in chess. He showed up one day at the Prospect computer labs, where coaches Barrett and Hart were supervising students playing two consultation games with two teams in adjoining rooms.

“That’s when I first met Robert,” said Hart, a chess enthusiast who likes developing the skills of young people. “I saw this new-comer talking about the other side’s weak squares as well as other positional factors. I didn’t agree with all his assessments, but his reasoning was sound and he was clearly thinking about the game at a more sophisticated level than any player we had before.”

Hart urged Barrett to move Robert up to the team’s first board, a level where only the most skilled players compete in local and state competition. Barrett decided to move him up slowly, however, and he consistently beat players at lower levels until he arrived at first board last year.

Full article here.