Beatriz Marinello, the first female president of the U.S. Chess Federation, attends many chess tournaments, and usually the milling hordes there are almost entirely male. The morning of Saturday, May 14, was different. In the hallways of the Holiday Inn next door to the Merchandise Mart, girls, oblivious to passersby, plopped themselves down on the patterned carpet next to the elevators, unrolled white-and-purple vinyl boards, set up pieces, started their portable double-faced black-and-white clocks, and banged out moves. “It’s exciting,” Marinello said. “It’s beautiful.”
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Women can play the game but few in the U.S. seem to want to. Michael Khodarkovsky, vice president of the Kasparov Chess Foundation, believes that girls are intimidated by playing in predominantly male environments. “In all other countries and in world chess competitions there are separate divisions and tournaments” for both sexes, he says. The foundation decided that a girls-only U.S. championship might help “build a bigger chess community among girls.”
The world of tournament chess has a hurry-up-and-wait rhythm. Every three hours or so, through the day and evening, players started another round in one of the hotel’s ballrooms, paying little attention to the world outside the hotel windows, or even to mealtimes. Nonplayers were barred from the playing area and relegated to the “skittles room” (chess jargon for a room dedicated to informal games and kibitzing), an alcove where chess books and videos were sold, and the hallways. One playing room housed the girls playing in the eight-and-under and ten-and-under sections; the other housed the four sections of older players.
But mature opponents can be hard to come by at any age. Maureen Campbell-Korves brought her daughter Alexandra, a seventh grader, to the tournament from New York. Knitting a sweater in the hallway outside the playing area, she recalled escorting Alexandra’s middle-school team to last year’s chess nationals in Dallas: she was the only girl in the group. The team took an ambitious route and chose to “play up” against high schoolers, who loomed over Alexandra. “These big boys would stand up, shove their chairs back, and she was so intimidated,” Campbell-Korves said. Alexandra’s team did well, but she was disconsolate on the plane home and talked about giving up the game. Still, she agreed to come to Chicago a few weeks later for the first girls’ national tournament. As her mother remembered it, “Susan Polgar and the other women who spoke were so empowering for these girls. They said it’s about learning to hold your own ground.”
