Chess team hopes to build on past success

Not long ago, the school's chess team was the best in the state. For six straight years from 2004-2010, the team won consecutive state titles.

Now those glory days are gone, and after losing powerhouse chess players such as graduates Evan Ye, Brian Wai and Sankash Shankar last June, the team is focused on rebuilding and piecing together a team with  enough talent to be competitive locally.

“We need to build good players, because while we do have some pretty decent players, we don’t have the strength we used to, since the graduated seniors and [senior Kevin Garbe] are not playing,”  senior and club president Matt Yee said.

Although Garbe is not returning to play on the team this year, he is still committed to chess and has decided to use his passion and knowledge of chess to dedicate himself to continuing his work with an organization known as the Hip Hop Chess Federation (HHCF).

HHCF is a non-profit designed to encourage unity, nonviolence and strategic thinking by fusing chess and music. Garbe assists with HHCF chess lessons and tournaments and shares his chess background with others.

Yee said that Garbe was the team’s strongest player, but Yee is confident that the team can still do well this year.

“Our team is mostly made up of freshmen and sophomores, so they’re just going to need to come to meetings and occasionally play online when they have time,” Yee said.

Meetings are held on Mondays and Fridays during lunch in math teacher PJ Yim’s Room 107. Yee said that being active and interested will not only allow the team to continue its success and place third or fourth in  the league, but it will also ensure that everyone has an enriching and enjoyable experience while playing chess.

He said the team is constantly looking for anyone who is  interested in chess and his goal is to help students explore their passion for chess and work together to make each other better players.

After  several freshmen joined the chess team through Club Day recruitment efforts, Yee hopes to influence  the incoming members to play the game often so they can get practice that will be needed to have a strong performance in matches particularly against challenging schools.

On Oct. 10 Yee and sophomore Yuhun Yang won their games when Saratoga played a difficult match against Lynbrook,  which ended in a 4-2 loss.

“Lynbrook is a really strong school,” Yee said. “They got second place last year in the league, but our newest player won his game. There was also pretty good game going on between freshman Rishi Veerapaneni and senior Eric Xu from Lynbrook.”

Sophomore Morteza Rohaninejad feels that although the match against Lynbrook was a struggle, the team has a lot of potential with Yee, sophomores Morteza Rohaninejad, Faisal Albannai, Kyle Yuen and Yuhun Yang; and freshman Rishi Veerapaneni.

“New people are arriving that we never expected to win games,” Rohaninejad said.