With students from all around the world, SU’s chess club transcends borders

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Jack Cavanagh recalled once playing an opponent that was at least 20 years older than him and did not speak English. They played two games and never spoke during their 40 minutes of playing, but were able to empathize with each other through shared moments of frustration and stoic concentration.

“Even though I couldn’t talk to (them), I could figure out a little bit about them just by how they play and by how they held themselves,” said Cavanagh, a sophomore in the Whitman School of Management. “Even though we couldn’t hold a conversation, I could still learn a little bit about him and his tendencies.”

Experiences like Cavanagh’s — connecting with people you’d otherwise have no connection with — are at the heart of the Syracuse University Chess Club.

Club president Emil Bakiev revived the SU Chess Club during October of 2021. After a grueling pandemic and too much free time on his hands, Bakiev said he simply wanted to open a space for chess players to enjoy the game and meet others who share the same interest.

The first official chess club meeting had a turnout of 10 people, which Bakiev said was enough to boost his confidence. He saw the capability of the club to grow.

“For most of the club members, it’s just a way to get together with people with similar interests and to have a great time, especially in this stressful world where there is so much pressure and negativity,” Bakiev said. “Just having two hours of fun time where you think of moves and pieces, I think that’s beautiful.”

As a student in the Whitman School of Management, Bakiev said he spends a lot of time with the people he meets through his classes and professional fraternity, so he enjoys the opportunity chess club has given him to meet people outside of his business bubble. One of the friends he made was sophomore Justo A. Triana.

When he was 17, Triana immigrated to the United States with his family from Cuba. His father had come to the U.S. five years prior and moved to Syracuse, where Triana and the rest of his family followed him to.

While getting closer to members like Bakiev and Cijun Zhang, Triana enjoys having conversations with his opponents where he can learn about their cultures. Being in the process of learning to speak Hindi and Italian, Triana also appreciates being able to practice his skills with certain members of the club.

“Whenever there is playing, you’re getting closer to people, even unintentionally,” Triana said.

Members in the SU Chess Club come from diverse backgrounds and cultures that have different relationships to chess.

Bakiev learned to play chess as a young kid in Russia, where the game gained popularity during the Soviet Union due to its affordability and the intellectual challenge it presented. Recently, globally and in Russia specifically, there has been a “chess boom” that has led to the idea that the game is for everybody, an idea that was not as prevalent before, Bakiev said.

Growing up in Russia, Emil Bakiev learned to play chess at a young age. Now Bakiev is the president of the Chess Club at SU.
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A New York Times article cites boredom due to the pandemic, the rise of chess streaming on Twitch, new sponsorships by Chess.com and the popularity of “The Queen’s Gambit” on Netflix as reasons for the recent chess boom.

“Now, people see chess as just a way to have a fun time with friends,” Bakiev said. “Even in Moscow, for example, there is a pretty popular chess bar where you can have food, drinks and play chess with both your friends and strangers.”

Being an advanced player, Zhang is somebody that Bakiev enjoys learning from, someone he also might not have met outside of the club.

Zhang is from a small, coastal city in China. He learned how to play chess when he was five and now holds the title of Chinese Transit Association master, which in other countries would compare to being a FIDE (International Chess Federation) master.

In China, there are chess schools that kids will attend for years, Zhang said, and competition is high. Zhang has friends he grew up with and competed with in his school for more than 10 years until they went to college. In these communities, students will be rivals over the board, but are friends when the game is over.

Zhang said that access to information regarding tournaments and games is very easy to attain in the U.S., whereas in China, matches are more private and difficult to find. In the U.S., Zhang has been able to play games from Syracuse to Las Vegas. Participating in these tournaments has allowed him to experience cultures he had only ever read about.

“It really makes my life much more broad, because of all those friends that I have made (in the SU Chess Club),” Zhang said. “It will be a part of experience and memory that I will never forget.”

Triana’s 21st birthday party was also a special moment for Zhang, because big parties are uncommon in China. There were people at the party from all different countries and backgrounds, and as an international student, he realized that he wasn’t alone.

Now, as a Ph.D. student, Zhang works 70 hour weeks and has had to let go of many hobbies and social events in order to focus on his work in the lab. However, the SU Chess Club has given Zhang a meaningful social outlet.

“A Ph.D.’s life is really lonely. We don’t have much socializing events,” Zhang said. “I don’t have that much time — it’s really sad. But at least I have our Chess Club.”

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While Zhang grew up in an educational system that encouraged youth to play chess, other members of the club had a different experience.

Jake Allen, vice president of the chess club, grew up in a high school that offered little opportunity for him to explore his interest in chess, since clubs were limited and the school prioritized sports.

After joining the club a year and a half ago, Allen eventually started to show up early and stay late in order to help Bakiev, and so the pair got closer. Regularly attending the club challenged Allen’s previous notions of what he thought its atmosphere would be like.

“When I first started showing up to chess club, I had the misconception that probably a lot of other people have of chess club — being nothing but completely quiet, dead serious (and) hypercompetitive,” Allen said. “From there, actually getting to see the meetings and just seeing everybody having a good time first and foremost made me realize just how wrong those sorts of expectations were and why I really enjoy chess club.”

Allen enjoys being able to teach the game to people who have never played chess before and appreciates being surrounded by players from around the world that he would not have met otherwise.

“Being from the states, literally only an hour away from Syracuse, it’s really nice to go from small town America to meeting people who’ve seen and lived just about every other experience in the world,” Allen said. “It’s really eye-opening and nice to see everybody across the globe has common ground like chess.”

Allen said that he has heard people make commentary about the governments in their native countries, describe struggles that they have had with national politics and express expectations that were placed upon them growing up.

“It’s really interesting to see how all of these different people have converged into one place, and then once again, converged past Syracuse into chess club,” Allen said. “Regardless of how different we are, we have this one really strong common goal, and that’s to be better at chess and make friends along the way doing so.”

Cavanagh said that the chess club is an understanding, warm community, compared to the stigma of what chess had been prior to the chess boom. At Bakiev’s club, he finds beauty in having perceptive and personal connections with his opponents, even if they don’t speak again after the game.

Ultimately, Chess Club is filled with smiles and is empty of pride as players indulge in friendly competition, Cavanagh said, where they can have lighthearted experience playing somebody over the board.

“No matter what age you are, no matter what background you are, no matter what language you speak, no matter where you come from up to that point, when you sit down all things are equal,” Cavanagh said. “It’s very simple and beautiful.”

Justo A. Triana was previously a columnist with The Daily Orange Opinion section. He does not influence the editorial content of the Culture section.