Gallery: 130 kids battle in chess tournament

IOWA CITY - More than 130 young chess players battled it out in Weber Elementary's fifth annual youth chess tournament on Saturday. The event's organizers said it was the biggest group of players the tournament had seen since it started half a decade ago.

To train for the event, players regularly attend the school's chess club, which caters to players of all ability levels.

“We have a lot of kids who have kind of branched off on their own and developed an interest in following international chess tournaments and they read all kinds of chess books and they almost start speaking in a different language,” tournament organizer Travis Kraus said. “And then we have one girl playing today who just started a month ago and had never played before.”

Kraus said the club coaches use a variety of techniques to prep the players for competition.

“We work on specific skills and we have a board with their names listed and they can check their skills of the list once they've learned them,” he said.

One of the players, Tony Morphew, won his first game of the day and was feeling confident heading into the next round.

“You get to sometimes win, sometimes lose,” he said outside the Weber Elementary gymnasium. But the best part “is meeting new people.”

Another player, Majid Taha, agreed. His strategy for the competition? “Just have fun and hope to win.”

Photos by Becky Malewitz

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