Southern California’s top chess players teamed up with budding chess students Saturday in a day-long competition at College of the Canyons.

The year’s event, formally known as the 2010 Sean Christian Reader Master-Junior Simul, was revived after a five-year hiatus, said Jay Stallings, director of the locally based California Youth Chess League.

The unrated match was a partnership between the chess league and the Sean Christian Reader Memorial Chess Fund, which offers financial aid and lessons for budding chess players.

“Chess is a game of focus and concentration and knowledge,” Stallings said.
The fund was created to honor Reader, a local resident, who died in 2006 at the age of 12 after a battle with leukemia, Stallings said.

Each of the four top-ranked chess players played against a team of six young chess prodigies.

The top-ranked chess masters represented a series of international countries, including Armenia and the Philippines.

The chess students, who ranged in age from 7 to 17, came from all across Southern California, including San Diego and Glendale, Stallings said.

The experience of playing against top-ranked chess players allows the younger chess students to form bonds with each other, as well as learn new techniques, said Randy Hough, tournament director and International Arbiter.

“They’ve played masters,” he said. “But not international and grand masters like here.”

Parents and supporters looked on as the students and champions spent hours silently studying the pieces on the chessboards.
Ou Wang’s daughter, 7-year-old Annie Wang, spent her Saturday playing chess.

“She likes to go to the tournaments and make friends,” he said.

Annie began playing chess at the age of 5 and soon grew to love it. Ou Wang said that Annie, who was named a winner during the Pan-American Youth Championships last year, has inspired him to start taking chess lessons so he can play with his daughter.

Rose Bryant was at the tournament to support her husband, Enrico Sevillano, who is considered one of the best Filipino chess players in history.

She said her son, who is now in college, learned organizational skills because of chess.

“It really helps with schools, sports and everything they do,” she said. “It’s very good for the mind.”