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Senior Competes for Chess Ranking

Kassa Korley has loved chess ever since he can remember

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Duke student Kassa Korley takes on a chess opponent in Washington Square Park.

Senior Kassa Korley was seven years old when he first sat down on the benches of Washington Square Park to play speed chess against New York’s “trash-talking chess hustlers.” Korley already knew he was keenly interested in puzzles and competition from playing Connect 4 in kindergarten. He could play for hours, curious about the possibilities created by the simple standing grid and colored discs.

Chess, however, was different, said Korley, who was recently quoted in a New York Times story about one of his mentors. Sixteen pieces, sixty-four squares, and more than a 1,000 years of history: players have a variety of different metaphors to explain its complexity. There are more possible chess games than atoms in the universe. A chess player looking eight moves ahead is confronted with as many possible games as there are stars in the galaxy.

As for a first-grader playing speed chess in New York’s East Village? The competition is intense, he said. Players sit down for hours and play dozens of high-speed games. The atmosphere is boisterous and competitive, almost the exact opposite of the hushed quiet of a normal chess tournament.

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A young Kassa Korley competes against an adult.

But Korley loved chess from the start – though said it’s never consumed him. He went to the park almost every day, alternating between speed chess and pick-up basketball until he began to enter chess tournaments. While other young chess players used expensive personal coaches, Korley went to tournaments with his grandmother, who’d tell him between matches “Win, lose or draw, you learn something.”

Looking back, he’d choose her support over a fancy chess coach any day.

Korley quickly became one of the country’s top-ranked chess players, but never let completely go of basketball. Sometimes when traveling to matches, he’d take a break to shoot some baskets.

Even now, playing basketball for an evening helps him maintain his focus in chess, he said. He plays chess like a war of attrition; he likes the games that go on for hours. In 2008, he became the youngest African-American national master, a title reserved for the top few players in the USA.

At Duke, when he’s not studying for his political science classes, he’s thinking about chess, scrolling through game replays online and reading commentary about his competitors and heroes. He's famous on campus for being able to play chess blind-folded; after years of tournaments and speed chess, the board is ingrained in his memory. Spending junior year abroad in Copenhagen gave him the opportunity to play in European tournaments.

While there, he won the Candidate Class tournament and qualified to represent Denmark in an international tournament. Though Korley is still looking for funding to return to Europe, the tournament could be his big break on the road to becoming an international grandmaster, the highest award a chess player can receive.

It’s a lifelong title similar to receiving a Ph.D. in chess. Korley is determined to be the second, and youngest, African-American grandmaster.

“It’s not even about me anymore; it’s what it means to other people,” he said. “I want people to know that you can get into the game without the prerequisites.”