‘Endless possibilities’: Students compete in first Hampton Scholastic Chess Tournament

Even though Ryan Hirsh started playing chess just a few years ago, the seventh-grader at Carson Middle School quickly outpaced his usual opponents — namely, his mom.

“Ryan beats me every time we play,” Amanda Hirsch joked. “So that’s why when I saw the tournament (on Facebook), I thought, let’s get you in front of some other people.”

Hirsch, along with almost 20 other kids, came together June 16 at Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church to compete in the first Hampton Scholastic Chess Tournament.

Luke Martin, a sophomore at Hampton High School, organized the competition, which consisted of four rounds played throughout the day.

Proceeds from the tournament, which included a $15 entry fee, are going toward Martin’s church field trip to Chicago.

“It’s an unrated tournament, so it’s not counted towards anything,” Martin, 15, explained. “So it’s pretty much just pickup games — you can just play for fun.”

Ryan, 12, won his first two games of the day, an experience he called “cool” but noted that he was “a little nervous in the beginning.” He learned his skills from his grandmother and grandfather, who used to coach the chess team at Allderdice High School. He said he also frequently plays online.

“It was good,” he said of winning the two games. “The first game I was like, thank God I’m done. And the second game it was close, but it ended up he resigned so I didn’t need to think my brain too much.”

Since learning chess in elementary school, Martin said the game has been an important part of his life and he wants to help other people discover it. In fact, one of his fondest memories is competing in a tournament at Poff Elementary School in fifth grade after he moved to Hampton. He said the winning trophy was “kind of like the Stanley Cup.”

Martin is an instructor with the Queens Gambit Chess Institute, a nonprofit that organizes chess programs across western Pennsylvania. He was named to the Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania’s 18 Under Eighteen Class of 2023 for his work helping students learn chess. His goal is to plan more tournaments in the future.

“The thing with chess is, it’s endless possibilities,” Martin said. “You almost never have a game go exactly the same way. You always have something different, and I find that intriguing.”