Chess students make moves at tournament

ORONO – Chess players will tell you that it’s a game of patience and perseverance, where victory can ebb and flow and confidence better not.

It’s a game of precision and focus, although too much focus can lead to mistakes and sometimes mistakes that can’t be overcome.

Forrest Flagg, a freshman from Presque Isle High School, can tell you all about focus.

Partway through his first match in the state scholastic chess tournament at the University of Maine during the weekend, Flagg realized he was headed for a loss. But he held on for as long as he could, hoping for a break.

He said he found an opening, one chance to put his opponent, Hampden Academy freshman James Faulkner, into checkmate. He brought up his rook. But to his dismay, he realized after making the move that he had forgotten about moving a pawn out of the way that would have allowed the checkmate.

“I didn’t see it,” said Flagg, who lost to Faulkner, a 14-year-old who said he has been playing chess for 11 years.

It was better than Flagg was expecting. Until a few months ago, he hadn’t been playing chess seriously, just an occasional game with his grandfather.

His Presque Isle school was making its first appearance in the tournament in years.

“I didn’t think that we were going to win any of them this year,” Flagg said.

In fact, a team from the Maine School of Science and Mathematics in Limestone captured the high school championship, its first. At an earlier event, Deer Isle-Stonington pupils continued their long string of victories at the elementary school level.

The state scholastic chess tournaments were held Saturday and a week earlier for elementary and junior high pupils. Both events in Orono drew more than 140 competitors.

In what was described by organizer Ralph Townsend as one of the most competitive tournaments in recent years, the matches saw the team of five MSSM students blank out the other schools, winning all five rounds, with Orono students tying for second with three other teams, but ultimately winning the tiebreaker.

Bangor High School, which took top honors in each of the last two years, placed 13th out of 16 teams.

Students from Belfast, Westbrook and Deer-Isle Stonington came in third, fourth and fifth, respectively, at the high school level.

For Deer Isle-Stonington, where chess playing begins early – the school has 22 pupils in kindergarten through second grade learning the game – elementary pupils on Feb. 28 won their sixth championship in a row and came in second at the junior high school level, behind Orono.

Coach Dick Powell attributes the success of Deer Isle-Stonington – winning 12 state titles in the three levels combined over the past 10 years – to the high interest in the game and to older students passing their experience to younger pupils. In a school of 250 students, more than 75 pupils play chess, he said.

Deer Isle-Stonington may be a regular to the tournaments, but it was Flagg’s team at Presque Isle High School that was making its first appearance in years.

Senior Sam Tanenbaum and freshman Luis Lozada each managed to rack up a winning round.

Brian Marchant, the automotive technology instructor at the Presque Isle Regional Technology Center and the team’s chess coach, saw Saturday’s tournament as a chance for his students to hone their skills and put to the test what they had learned.

On the three-hour ride down Saturday, they warmed up by practicing on a computer chess game. Marchant knew it was going to be tough.

“It’s intense for sure,” Marchant said early on in the tournament.

Timing is also important and can spell the difference between victory and defeat as at least one chess player found out.

The last game of the last round and the last players still at it were Cullen Edes, a home-schooled student from Orono and MSSM’s Will Owens. Four of Owens’ teammates had won their rounds against their Orono counterparts. With two pawns and a rook compared to Edes’ rook, Owens appeared on his way to a victory. Even Edes admitted later that he thought he was finished.

Then Edes looked at his competitor’s clock and noticed that Owens was out of time and hadn’t made his play. Edes declared a victory under the timing rules, although it was not enough to thwart MSSM.

Time is strictly monitored with special devices, and players are limited to 60 minutes. Such restrictions were instituted to avoid long, drawn-out battles that Steve Wong, the tournament director, said 100 years ago could last three or four days.