Chess mates
Family shares love, talent for game
If you see more chess wizards emerging from the area, thank members of an extended family, transplants from the former Soviet Union.
Valery Frenklakh of Newton teaches chess full time; his son, Dmitry, is president of his college chess club; and nephew Roman Gankin is inspiring grade-school children to take up the game.
"Hard work is more important than talent," said Gankin, a native of Belarus and an 18-year-old senior at Watertown High School.
Three afternoons a week Gankin runs afternoon chess programs for children in kindergarten through eighth grade at Morse Community School in Cambridge and St. Stephen's Armenian Elementary School in Watertown.
"I try not to talk too much because their attention span, on average, is about 10 minutes," said Gankin.
But that's enough time for him to teach students to watch their pawns, and deliver a life lesson that he hopes will be carried out of the classroom: Never give up, even if you're behind.
"You're playing a human and they could also make a mistake," said Gankin.
He recalled falling behind in a tournament when he was 12 and thinking his prospects were bleak, only to win in the end.
Gankin tailors his instruction to the student. Some still are learning the rules; others are struggling with their opening moves, which he says is common among young players. He challenges the students with puzzles and takes them move-by-move through games played by grand masters.
"Even for the best players in the world it's constantly a learning process," said Gankin, who took up the game when he was 6. "I can be explaining something in class and see something new that I haven't seen before."
Frenklakh, Gankin's uncle, is a chess master, according to the Fédération Internationale des Échecs, or FIDE. The international ruling body of chess, founded in 1925 in Paris, awards the title to those who have achieved a minimum rating of 2,300 through tournament play.
Frenklakh, 52, has taught chess full time for more than half his life. He now has more than 200 students, ages 5 to 80, around Boston. Two of them took top honors in statewide tournaments this year: Michelle Chen of Concord was first among fourth graders in the Gus Gosselin/Massachusetts Grade Championship; and Matthew Klegon of Newton placed first in the high school division of the Spiegel Cup Massachusetts State Singles Championship.
Klegon, a senior at the Buckingham, Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, will go on to represent the state in August at the Denker Tournament of High School Champions in Cherry Hill, N.J. Klegon has been a student of Frenklakh's for nine years.
Frenklakh, who has master's degree in education, said he not only hopes to make his students better chess players but also more confident people. "Some people are leaders and some are not, but everyone has talent," he said. "People don't realize they have it and need to figure it out."
But some families do seem to have all the talent: His brother, Lev, plays and teaches chess in California, and has a daughter who at 15 took first place in the US Open Chess Championship in 1995.
Frenklakh's 22-year-old son, Dmitry, is president of the chess club at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, where he is a senior. He teaches chess at the Brimmer and May School and the Soule Recreation Center in Chestnut Hill.
It was Dmitry who suggested his younger cousin, Roman Gankin, start teaching chess after school. Gankin had been manning the fryer at Wild Willy's Burgers in Watertown, and was ready for a change. "I just felt that it wasn't for me," Gankin said. "I needed something more intellectual."
Now Gankin earns in three to four hours of teaching chess what he made spending 18 hours at Wild Willy's.
For more information on chess lessons, e-mail Roman Gankin at Romanzg88@gmail.com, Valery Frenklakh at vf1999@comcast.net, or Dmitry Frenklakh at Umasschess@yahoo.com. The Massachusetts Chess Association is at masschess.org.
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