Local teen a national chess champion

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This article was published 29/05/2023 (942 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Martin Riquelme’s mastery of chess has now been recognized at a national level, after he beat the top Grade 10 players in the country during the Chess’n Math Association’s recent tournament in Montreal.

After claiming victory over the May long weekend, the 15-year-old got to celebrate with his fellow Brandon Knights Chess Club members on Saturday, meeting up at their usual downtown library hangout spot with his first-place trophy in hand.

“I just about fell off my chair. It’s just a staggering achievement,” Brandon Knights mentor Gwynfor Richards told the Sun afterwards. “I mean, he’s the top Grade 10 player in Canada, which technically makes him the under-16 champion.”

While this marks Riquelme’s highest accolade as a chess player to date, it’s hardly his first time competing at this level.

The Vincent Massey High School student said he has taken part in this particular tournament since Grade 2, although a first-place finish has remained elusive until now.

“It’s always been tough competition,” he said.

“I think the best I’ve gotten was third [place], which was online. And now they’ve got back to in-person and I got first [place] after a lot of training.”

Riquelme credits a lot of his success in competitive chess to his family, with his older brother Nicolas originally inspiring him to get involved in the game when they lived in Chile.

When his family immigrated to Canada in 2013, Riquelme’s father, Rodrigo, established the Brandon Knights Chess Club five years later to give local youth a chance to develop their skills without having to travel all the way to Winnipeg for tournaments.

“It started out really little, just a bunch of friends hanging out at a room in [Brandon University]. But then it started expanding,” he said.

“Now there’s more people helping out with the chess club now and it’s grown a lot.”

When the club couldn’t meet during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Riquelme moved his training online and continued to sharpen his strategies through virtual spaces like Chess.com.

To Riquelme, this country-wide shift to online learning served as an equalizer of sorts for smaller chess clubs, whose members were finally given access to resources and big-time tournaments without having to travel all over Canada.

“After a while you saw some kids start to improve a lot because they started to play online, and online you can play unlimited games,” he said. “It’s right there. You open your laptop or phone and start playing.”

After social distancing restrictions were lifted across the country, Riquelme was able to jump right back into in-person competitions, with international master Tom O’Donnell advising him in the background.

Looking ahead to the future, Riquelme wants to return to Chess’n Math Association national tournaments throughout his remaining years of high school, while also keeping an eye toward adult competitions in the future.

For anyone who wants to replicate his success on a national stage, Riquelme recommends they simply play chess as much as possible, with the Brandon Knights being a particularly good resource to draw from.

And as someone who has been playing chess for over half a century, Richards believes Riquelme has yet to reach his full potential and can’t wait to see where the 15-year-old takes his keen eye for the game moving forward.

“He’s entering a world that I never quite made it to,” Richards said. “He’s going off into the stratosphere and it’s just wonderful to see him go.”

The Brandon Knights Chess Club meets at the downtown Brandon branch of the Western Manitoba Regional Library every Saturday between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. New players are always welcome.

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