chess club – The Concordian

Learning about life through chess.

Among all the comings and goings to the Hall building’s seventh floor is a group of students all connected by the same passion for chess. Twice a week, a little over a dozen students from the Concordia Chess Club get together to play games, socialize, and get away from the stresses of university life.

Monday and Thursday afternoons are chess time for regular and the less regular chess players of all levels. Even I, with my (very) little experience in chess, was welcomed with open arms, and offered to play with other beginner players.

Shoshana Wasserma is an executive committee member of the Concordia Chess Club. For her, chess is not only a game, but also a place to relax and forget about the stresses of life. “One of the biggest reasons I started playing chess was because I wanted a distraction from interpersonal struggles,” Wasserman said. “And I was like, man, chess is the perfect thing to throw myself into, because it can be very consuming and it can take up a lot of your mental energy.”

Calculations, thinking and creating plans in chess are all transferable skills, according to Wasserman. And this, she noted, “helps just keep [her] life a little more organized.”

Sara Salehi is a member who joined the club last fall, and she likes how it gives her the opportunity to meet with friends and catch a break. “We’re fun. We make the environment fun,” she said.

Whether you are a complete beginner (like me), or a very experienced player ready to take on Dario Martinez, the captain of Concordia’s team at the 2024 Canadian University Chess Championships, you can find someone at your level to play and have fun with.

“I think it’s a really good opportunity to practise failure in a safe space,” Wasserman said. “Because with chess, there is so much responsibility and accountability put on you as a player that, like when you blunder a piece, when something goes wrong, you know that’s on you, but you are doing it in a contained environment. So you have the opportunity to practice failure and do that in a way where you can still learn from your mistakes.”

The Concordia Chess Club regularly posts information on their Instagram and Facebook pages. However, they also welcome people who simply want to come and play chess, no matter their level.

“Come join, tell us you’re a beginner and that you haven’t played that much,” Wasserman said. “And usually what we can do is we can pair you up with other people who are also just starting out.”

There’s been a number of chess clubs at Concordia over the years, but as it often happens in university, members graduate or move on without passing the club down to other students.

Chess Club Concordia is a brand new club that was created and given club-status by the CSU back in October 2019 thanks to its four executives and establishing members — Nick McNulty, Sami Noun, Liam Douglas and Adam Luqman Hakim Bin Mohamed, alongside Roman Zelensky who joined as an executive shortly after– petitioning.

The four executives (pictured in feature photo) of the club held a tournament on Jan. 16 to decide who would represent Concordia at the Canadian University Chess Championship on Jan. 18 and 19 in Waterloo, Ontario. After the last checkmate, the four members heading to Waterloo include executives Luqman, Noun and Zelensky and member Jason Chan.

“We had to create a whole new club,” said McNulty as he took one of my pawns off the board. “Concordia has probably never participated [in the tournament]. I think this is a great opportunity to maybe get our asses kicked, but that’s not the point. The point is telling the world that Concordia has a chess club. We’re trying to garner more interest.”

I sit across from McNulty for a game while we talk. There are about six games going on at once, with a couple of people watching some of the more interesting matches. Some are regulars, others are brand new to the club or are just sitting down for the love of the game.

A player asks me if I’m doing a Vienna Game opening move. I quickly reassure them that there is absolutely no strategy involved in my gameplay.

“I was in chess club when I was in elementary school,” said McNulty. “Once I met Sami (Noun), he asked if I played, and we started playing online. Chess is a lot of study and memorization, but also it’s intuition and speed. It’s a matter of sensing what’s going to happen.”

The long table where all the games are being played is extremely social. Players swap opening move strategies, laugh at a viral video of World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen beating a player in five moves, compare Lichess scores, and discuss their favourite online chess personalities like Eric Rosen and Chessbrah.

“If we win one game at the championship, that would be pretty nice,” said Douglas. “It’s not about winning so much, it’s more about us just being there. Hopefully in the future we’ll go to more tournaments that are maybe a bit closer.”

Both McNulty and Douglas talk about the community of chess players that they’ve found since helping start the club.

The club has participated in a couple of open tournaments over the past couple months. “The turnout for open events at the library is actually quite numerous,” said Noun. “It’s not five or six, but open events we get 50 to 60 people who stop and play and ask questions.”

The club doesn’t have funding from Concordia to pay for the trip, so the four executives will be paying for the trip themselves.

“Right now we’re only going to send four people because we’re worried that we’re not going to get the money we’d need [to send two teams],” said McNulty. “We’re told that special funds requests open in February, and we’ll hope to be reimbursed later.”

As McNulty traps my king into a checkmate, an onlooker reassures me by telling me that I only lost because I made bad moves.

“Chess is pretty frustrating sometimes,” said McNulty. “Especially if you want to get good at it for some reason.”