Junior chess tournament draws 97 players

Natividad Cardenas (left) and Izak Negrete did battle at the annual Waypoint Chess Tournament Saturday.

by Herald Staff Writer & CHERYL SCHWEIZER
| February 5, 2013 5:05 AM

EPHRATA - Zech Long was in deep trouble, his king surrounded and probably trapped. But then again, maybe not.

"Wait, wait," Long said. It appeared he found a move with his bishop that would stave off the end, at least for a few moves.

Nah. It wouldn't work.

"I think I've got him checkmated," explained his opponent Rachel Poruff to the moderator looking at the board. And she was right. If Zech moved his king in one direction he was threatened by Rachel's rook. If he moved in any other direction he was threatened by her queen. Checkmate.

Rachel and Zech met in the second round of the seventh annual Scholastic Chess Tournament, held Saturday and sponsored by the Waypoint Foundation. The identity of the winners was not available at press time.

The 2013 tournament drew 97 players, said tournament director Troy Pugh. The kids filled the lunchroom at Parkway Elementary School in Ephrata.

The tournament was open to students in kindergarten through high school, and it drew participants from primary grades right up to juniors and seniors. Players lined up their kings, queens, rooks, bishops, knights and pawns and did battle. Every move was recorded on a chart provided by tournament organizers, and some games were so hotly contested that they spilled over into a second chart. Others went a little quicker. "Some players are really good. Some players don't know what they're doing," explained Luis Gomez, a sixth grader at Parkway who used to live in Moses Lake. His friend Garrett McLain taught him to play, he said, way back in fourth grade.

"You get to see how people's strategies are, and then you can use your brain. It's really fun," McLain said. He's a seventh grader at Chief Moses Middle School in Moses Lake.

And chess players get to meet all kinds of different people, Luis said. Boys and girls play chess, adults play, teenagers play.

"It's a fun strategic game. It's really cool to play a game and learn something while I'm doing it," Rachel said.

"Every game is different," Pugh said. He's been playing since he was a kid, and now plays with his daughters, he said. "There's certainly a level of excitement to it," with each player "seeing if they can outwit their opponent," he said.

The foundation sponsors the tournament in memory of the founders' late brother Ryan, who was an enthusiastic chess player.