photo: Jeff Smith
Nearly 50 years ago, Karen Enos played her first game of chess. She played her second in July, and on the second Sunday of September, faced one of her toughest opponents a 5-year-old girl.
"She probably knows more than I do about the game at this point," said Enos, 63. "But I think it's pretty empowering for a little girl to sit across a chessboard from an older woman and be playing well."
Enos and her young opponent might face off again next month when the 9 Queens Initiative celebrates its anniversary with Tucson's first chess tournament and workshop exclusively for women and girls.
All Queens Day will be held Sun, Oct 18 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at Bookmans, 6230 E. Speedway Blvd., and include beginning, intermediate and advanced levels of tournament play, as well as workshops for girls and women wanting to learn chess.
The free event will feature chess play by some of Tucson's women leaders, including vice-mayor Regina Romero and councilwomen Nina Trasoff and Karin Uhlich.
"The empowerment of girls and women is a priority for me so I wanted to be part of it," Romero said. "But I'm a very, very beginner. I'm going to have a few lessons before the event so I will at least know the names of the chess pieces!"
The 9 Queens Initiative is an offshoot of 9 Queens, a non-profit founded two years ago by Tucson native Jean Hoffman and two-time U.S. Womens Chess Champion Jennifer Shahade of Philadelphia.
The nonprofit's goal is to empower girls and at-risk youth of both genders through chess instruction and competition.
While the 9 Queens Initiative focuses on girls and women, 9 Queens has reached out to all children through chess programs at three Tucson Unified School District Title I elementary schools.
In addition, 9 Queens hosted two co-ed chess tournaments in partnership with the Pima County Public Library last year, and will be doubling that next year, as well as hosting the second annual "Chess Fest" family event in May, Hoffman said.
Since launching the 9 Queens Initiative, participation of female chess players in local co-ed tournaments has quadrupled, giving lie to the stereotype that the fairer sex isnt interested in whats dubbed the "ultimate intellectual sport."
(photo Jeff Smith)
"At our library tournament last year, we had about 10 percent women and girls, which is the national average for female chess players in tournaments," Hoffman said. "This year, the beginners section of the tournament was 50 percent female. That's really exciting to have Tucson be so high above the national average."
Hoffman, who has degrees from Harvard and Yale and spent three years teaching chess in New York Citys inner-city schools, believes chess has the power to change the world by changing girls perception of themselves.
She said research shows that chess can improve cognitive abilities, increase student achievement, promote emotional intelligence and increase self-esteem, but stereotypes keep girls out of the game.
"A lot of people still think women will never be as good as men," she said. "Even though there have been women chess champions and women grand masters, because there are so few women involved, people think they aren't as good as men. 9 Queens wants to change that perception, to give girls and women confidence in themselves that they can play chess, to counteract the negative talk they tend to have around it."
Why the name 9 Queens?
In chess, the Queen is the most powerful piece on the board because she can move fastest and capture many pieces. There are eight pawns in the game, and while the weakest pieces, pawns have the potential to become another piece if they can make it to the opposite side of the chessboard. Potentially, one player could get all her pawns safely to the opposite side of the board and turn each of them into another Queen.
"We see our name as a metaphor of where each person could be if she could reach her full potential," Hoffman explained.
Some of the benefits of chess:
- A four-year project found that second grade students exposed to chess instruction experienced accelerated increases in IQ during those four years. The project trained 100,000 teachers and involved a sample of 4,236 students.
- A one-year study found students who received chess instruction during the school day obtained significantly higher reading scores than students who received additional reading instruction.
- A seven-year study found that students exposed to chess for at least a year experienced improved self-esteem and self-image.
For more details on these statistics, see www.9queens.org/why-chess
Check out these links for more chess info:
www.9queens.org - 9 Queens Web site, www.uschess.org - U.S. Chess Federation, www.jennifershahade.com - Jennifer Shahade, author of Chess Bitch: Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport
