RONEN ZILBERMAN / RZILBERMAN@STARBULLETIN.COM
Four-time World Women's Chess Champion Susan Polgar made a move against Mark Flores as she played a chess match against 50 young chess players at the same time yesterday at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.
Isle kids checkmate
Olympic chess champ
Jasmine Brabazone slumped in her chair and exclaimed, in a desperate tone, that she was "just kind of suffering."
"I'm dying over here," the 12-year-old added, feigning a frown as she looked at the pieces she had lost to one of the world's top-ranked chess players.
Brabazone's neighbor, 8-year-old Katie Tanabe, was doing a little better. "My plan's working," she said with a broad smile and a wave of her Hello Kitty pencil.
The two joined 48 others -- mostly kids -- yesterday in a simultaneous chess face-off against four-time World Women's Chess Champion Susan Polgar.
The game, called a "simul match," took more than five hours. At the tournament's end, three Hawaii teenagers had beaten Polgar: 17-year-old Punahou School student David Kohl and 13-year-olds Robert Lau and John Iinuma.
Iinuma, a Pearl Highlands Intermediate School eighth-grader and Hawaii's middle school chess champ for two years in a row, said earlier in the day that he was offering Polgar his "solid defense."
During the tournament, players sat at tables arranged in a square at the Hilton Hawaiian Village as Polgar made her rounds, stopping at each board to make a move.
Polgar tours the nation playing in similar chess tournaments and lecturing to the game's younger players.
"That's my way to promote chess," Polgar said yesterday after the games, "and give an opportunity to many people at the same time to challenge me."
Contestants in yesterday's games were as young as 3 and ranged in skill from novice to expert.
Polgar, a three-time Olympic chess champion, is the world's No. 2 player.
"I lasted longer than I intended to," said Mililani resident John Imperial about 45 minutes into his game. "Most of us are in trouble."
By that time, Brittney Kawahara was "dead already."
"I don't really play," the Pearl Highlands Intermediate School explained.
But six of her friends do.
"It gets your mind going," said eighth-grader Martinea Trippett, who joined Kawahara. "It helps you memorize things. It's just a lot of fun."
Trippett's father, Frank, started a chess club early this year in his Makaha neighborhood. The group's elementary and middle school members meet every Sunday to improve their game.
"You never really can master it," said Trippett, who has been playing chess for more than 20 years. "You're always developing your skill."
Most of the club's participants attended yesterday's tournament, including eighth-grader Audrey Mayfield. "I like the way you have to think about your moves," she said. Fellow club member Alapuakai Carroll agreed.
"It's fun," she said. "It's challenging."
Chess, Trippett added, is "a perfect game."
"It's something that you bring over to your own life. There's always a logical choice. There's always a wrong choice."
Polgar would agree. "Chess is certainly not just a game," she said. "It allows discipline, concentration and planning."
Polgar's 5-year-old son, Tommy, was among the tournament's contestants. Next to him sat fifth-grader Erik Donathan, who took up chess three years ago.
"It exercises your brain," he said as his mom looked on with a smile. "You have to use strategies to beat your opponent."
Nine-year-old Andrew Miller, of Colorado Springs, Colo., said that when playing chess "you have to ... think about where you have to move."
His mother, Kathleen, said she encouraged her son to get involved in chess when his school started up a club.
"You need strategy in life," she said.
"I just love chess," said 8-year-old Alex Felt, who was playing next to his dad in the tournament. "I just really love it."
The Felts, vacationing from Kentucky, were playing in their swim shorts.
