Middle School Student Wins State Chess Title

By Jeff White

Newtown Middle School has a modern-day Bobby Fisher walking its halls.

Daniel Skiba, a seventh grade student, was recently crowned the state champion for his grade level at the Connecticut State Scholastic Chess Championships held at Greenwich’s Western Middle School.

Matched up against middle school players of similar caliber, Daniel dismissed four of them on his way to the title. His shortest match lasted just 15 minutes, the longest match, over two and a half  hours.

“My matches were longer than most people’s,” Daniel recalls in a modest fashion that belies the fierce competitiveness he displays during competitions. He knows he is good, and loves nothing more than proving it.

His chess playing, Daniel recalls, started as an antidote for boredom. A two-year checkers champion at his Danbury elementary school, Daniel soon grew tired at the absence of real strategy in checkers. “I was really bored,” he explains. “I started to play chess, and it turns out that I was really good.”

He taught himself the game’s basic and finer points, poring over chess books and utilizing chess teaching programs on his computer. He started taking on his father, who proved solid competition until Daniel turned that corner all gifted performers seem to do when he soon began to beat his father consistently. Daniel now says that his father does not play with him anymore.

After making the long commute to Ridgefield’s library for a chess club, two years ago Daniel decided to begin competition in tournaments sponsored by the Scholastic Chess Federation. To date, Daniel has competed in six tournaments.

Tournament play was an adjustment for the seventh grader. Daniel recalls that at his first tournament, his nerves were at a point where they almost boiled over into a butterfly-induced nausea. “My first game that I ever played I was really nervous. Now I just go in and I’m nice and calm.”

And successful.

Daniel has made a habit out of winning tough matches. Chess enthusiasts do not merely play the game, they study it, and they know that there is a moment in every contest when the opponent will make a mistake from which he or she cannot return. Daniel remembers a match in which he and his opponent were making rapid-fire moves, back and forth. Because of the speed of play, his opponent made a mistake, one that he didn’t realize he had made. “I just tore him apart after that,” Daniel smiles. The match took only 15 minutes.

“If I have someone’s knight, I’m pretty sure I’ll win. If I’m one piece up, I’m pretty sure I’ll win. That knight or that bishop might be one of the pieces they really need,” he explains.

Still, there are other matches in which careful consideration must be placed on how you are going to open the match, or whether or not you win by playing good offense or defense.

 “It’s sort of like an art,” Daniel says. “There are so many variations that you can do. There are so many different pieces that you can move in so many different ways, and there are so many positions that you could play.

“If [my opponent] is a really hard player, I try to play a defensive position if I’m black, or if I’m white, I’ll try to attack right away. I’m not that good at playing defense, because even when I’m playing defense, I’m attacking.”

Daniel has played against adults throughout Newtown, with much the same success has he has demonstrated in his tournament play: there are not many out there that can beat him. And when he is not playing around Newtown or at regional tournaments in Greenwich or New York, he takes his attacking style of chess to cyberspace.

Daniel says that he tries to play a couple of online chess games every day. The World Wide Web being what it is, Daniel can stage matches through the Internet Chess Club against enthusiasts around the world, and do it all in real time. He has beaten FBI employees, and played against men in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Russia.

Though he wages these nightly chess wars, most of his time, Daniel says, is taken up with homework and friends – many of whom do not share Daniel’s love of chess.

 Daniel has been playing the game long enough to acquire some skills that escape the casual chess dabbler. He knows, for instance, whether he will win or lose a match usually within the first several moves. He can also predict what his opponent is going to do before he or she does it, thus allowing himself to have several strategic scenarios in mind for situations that are often three or four moves away.

And he understands what it takes to be successful in a game that seems to baffle more people than not. “[You need] devotion and concentration, and patience. I used to not have that much patience. Now I’m just a lot more calm and I can wait [between moves].”

Scholastic tournament chess follows a typical school year, so Daniel’s upcoming competition in the beginning of June will be his last for the season. Although the coming summer will be spent with his family and friends, Daniel will also make time for his hobby, continuing with the chess lessons he takes from a local teacher.

Daniel is currently working on improving his national ranking among young chess players. Although he has been ranked in the top 900 throughout the United States, that ranking stands to improve, thanks to his recent breakthrough on the state level.