COEUR d’ALENE — Check ...

The game of chess can be very intense, even for the youngest of students.

About 40 students, from kindergarten to eighth grade, stared intently at their boards as they each pondered their next move.

They did this through five rounds Saturday at the Cougar Challenge Scholastic Chess Tournament, held at Canfield Middle School.

The tournament, sponsored by the Inland Northwest Chess Academy, was open to all students K-12, but most of the kids who arrived were elementary school students and some from junior high.

"Some of these kids have been playing chess since before they could walk," said Steve Brown.

Brown is a teacher at Canfield and holds an after-school chess club through Club 245 for local students.

This is the second year for a chess tournament at Canfield, but last year was for middle school students in the Coeur d'Alene area and was much smaller. This year they opened it up to all students from around the Inland Northwest and most of the younger children came from Spokane to participate.

Andrew Chester, 13, is an eighth-grader at Canfield and holds the title of last year’s champion at the middle school tournament. He said he has been playing chess for 6-8 years and this was his third tournament.

"I like coming to these tournaments," Chester said. "You get to play against a lot of people and it's quiet. In the chess club it's pretty loud."

His club-mates call him Chester instead of Andrew because his last name has "ches" in it which sounds like "chess." Brown said he is the best player in the club because nobody at Canfield has beat him yet.

Some of the elementary school kids were doing really well, even winning against the middle school students.

"That is one of the challenges — not to give up," Brown said. "They have to keep playing."

Chester was one of the students who used annotation, noting each move that he made. It was not required, so only about half the students noted their moves. Brown said using annotations is good because it helps the kids to really think through their moves.

"One of the advantages of having that annotation is that they really develop a stronger thinking set about how to play the game," Brown said.

During the tournament, the winners of each round were often the students who used annotation, so Brown said he may require students in the chess club to use that system next year.

He said, in general, it is good for children to learn chess at a young age because it really helps them gain critical thinking skills and is a skill they can hold on to.

"It's a life sport," he said. "If they learn it at this age, it is a game they can play for their entire life."

He said a number of studies have been done on children who play chess. In one study, he said they took a number of students and randomly divided them into two groups. One group played chess at least once a week for the entire school year while the other half did not. Everything else being equal at the end of the school year, the kids who played chess had, on average, 15 percent higher scholastic scores than the other group.

John Dill, chairman of Inland Chess Academy, said according to peer review scientific research, 20 minutes of chess per day can raise the IQ by 10 points over a period of two years. He said these studies are done with thousands of students. CT scan studies of the brain that compared participants playing chess to 13 other activities, such as reading, writing or playing an instrument, the person playing a "serious" chess game showed 30 percent higher brain activity than any of the other actions, Dill said.

"What that tells you is it causes kids to think more critically, more analytically," Brown said. "It takes a lot of thinking to play chess, and play it well, so those kids that develop skills in chess are better thinkers."

As a mom, Lawra Gosselin-Harris, of Spokane, said it is just the coolest thing ever to watch the kids play chess. She was there with her 8-year-old son, Connor, who has been playing chess for about three years.

Gosselin-Harris was helping enter scores into the computer, but most parents were not allowed in the room during the tournament. Even a non-verbal expression by a parent could change the move the child intended to make.

"To walk into a room where all these great little kids are sitting here, being quiet, paying attention and they love it — it's so awesome it makes your heart sing," she said.

... Mate