Imagine playing a game of chess for four hours non-stop, breaking only to use the washroom.
That’s the world that 10-year-old Sherry Tian lives in, a B.C. chess champion, who’s been beating adult women players and will be representing the province in the U.S.A.’s most prestigious girls chess tournament, the 13th Annual Susan Polgar Foundation Girls’ Invitational (SPFGI) in St. Loius this July.
Last year, the Grade 5 DeBeck elementary student finished fourth in her age group in Canada and showed up well in the World Championships in Greece.
And a couple of weeks after the marathon four-hour match in Victoria — when she beat a Grade 8 boy — Sherry became the first ever B.C. player to qualify from the province for the Susan Polgar (Canadians have been excluded in the past) when she won the U-19 section.
“It was a little bit of a surprise,” said Sherry, modestly, who’s only been playing the game for two years.
Now ranked number one in B.C., her rapid rise to the top of the game in the province is less of a surprise for her father, Alex Tian, who recalled how his daughter’s Grade 2 teacher noticed she had a talent for math, before placing her on an accelerated math program.
“We then asked her to try chess and she proved to be very, very fast at the game,” said Alex, who brought his family, including wife Nicole Zhao, from Beijing in 2008 to live in their single-family home on Ash Street. The couple had another daughter, Eliza, five years ago.
“She then rose up the ratings very quickly with the (Chess and Math Association) and she has a rating of 1,352 with the (Canadian Federation of Chess).”
At a rating of 1,800, you can be considered a chess master, said Alex, a construction project manager.
Of the longest match of her short career in Victoria last month, Sherry said she was “very tired” at the end of it, as players are not allowed to eat in that time and very little communication is allowed with your opponent.
St. Loius, she said, will be “the biggest challenge yet; I’m looking forward to it, though.”
Alex said, in the beginning, he taught Sherry a little, but “after that, she just got on with it herself.”
“She beat me fair and square after about two months of playing. I was so happy for her, but kind of sad, for me,” he laughed, noting that he has won a parent and child game at the school once, but that’s it.
As well as playing chess online every day for about two hours, Sherry, who is doing Grade 7 math, is about to take her level 8 piano test and writes short mystery novels.
