The challengers sit behind chessboards along the orange and yellow walls of Amani International coffeehouse, on Pittsburgh's North Side. They are all different ages—a boy in grade school is at a board between a goateed college student and an older man with thinning gray hair. Most of them just play regularly at local chess clubs; a few of them are highly ranked experts. Probably the only thing they all have in common is their opponent—Carnegie Mellon's Darmen Sadvakasov. He moves from board to board, stopping at each for only a few seconds to watch his opponent's move and then quickly make his own.
Sadvakasov, despite playing 16 opponents at once, isn't overmatched. He is an international grandmaster. "Grandmaster" is a title awarded by the World Chess Federation to the best chess players in the world; there are only 60 in the United States.
Sadvakasov, who is working toward a master's degree in public management from the Heinz School, was awarded the title after winning the World Junior Championships in 1998. Since then, the native of Kazakhstan has competed in tournaments in more than 40 countries. At one of his first international tournaments, in 2001, he played two games against one of the greatest chess players of all time, Gary Kasparov. Both games ended in draws. In 2004, he defeated Kasparov's longtime rival, former world champion Anatoly Karpov.
"On any given day, Darmen could potentially beat one of the world's top 20 players," says Clyde Kapinos, a Pittsburgh Chess Club board member.
It's unlikely to see Sadvakasov playing a serious game around campus—the games he plays in international tournaments last six hours, and he'll spend three hours preparing beforehand. He does train at least once a week with another grandmaster, Alex Shabalov, who is the current U.S. champion. They analyze positions and moves from past games.
Sadvakasov says that the skills he's developed playing chess—memory, concentration, logic—have been helpful in the classroom. Most of Sadvakasov's professors know about his prowess in chess, too, but that is no real benefit. "They don't play with me for grades," he jokes.
Always eager to get others interested in chess, especially youngsters, Sadvakasov has held simultaneous games before. This match at Amani is actually relatively small for him; he's played against as many as 50 people at once. So it's no surprise when, 70 minutes after his first move on board one, only one of his opponents manages a draw. The kings on the other 15 boards lie on their sides, defeated by the grandmaster.
—ROB CULLEN (HS'02)
