At Trinity's Chess Club, Checkmate Ends With Twirled Mustaches

I have tried to control a room full of five- and six-year-olds, at a birthday party. I did not ride the wave. The wave rode me, into the coat closet, where I hid with the cake.

Then a voice called out across the cafeteria: a young player had made a checkmate. Everyone gathered around the board, and the coach walked them through it: the opponent's king pinned between a bishop at one end of the board and a queen at the other.

And then he added the most important part of the lesson. "Now twist your mustaches," he said, and gave a loud, devious laugh. The children, who had no mustaches, twirled them anyway, trying to imitate his chortle. "You see," he told them, "chess players must be sneaky."

A whole cafeteria of kindergartners twirling imaginary mustaches is the best argument for chess I have ever heard. The game teaches patience, planning and pattern recognition. It also, crucially, teaches the laugh.

Then it was back to the boards, and later a worksheet. The reporter asked a kindergartner with a mop of curly hair whether he had just learned to play this year. "No; I learned in Pre-K," he said, and went back to his "Mate in 1" worksheet, his name written across the top in letters still uncertainly formed.

"No; I learned in Pre-K." He said it the way a veteran says he was at Normandy.

Trinity's after-school program runs chess at several levels, up to a championship class requiring tournament experience and a rating of 1000 or more.

The youngest plays chess now, badly, with enormous confidence. Last night she pinned my king between her bishop and her queen. I did not notice. She twirled an imaginary mustache, laughed a long devious laugh, and asked for an M&M. I paid her two.