Nass­er Khan

In a re­cent ad­dress by Min­is­ter of Sport Brent San­cho, the min­is­ter said he is "very in­ter­est­ed in the idea of in­tro­duc­ing chess clubs in schools where they don't al­ready ex­ist," and he promised to build a Chess Com­plex/Cen­tre for the T&T Chess As­so­ci­a­tion. This is a huge fil­lip for the sport of chess in T&T.

Along with that, an­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant boost was pro­vid­ed when 17-year-old Ja­van­na Smith was re­cent­ly named Ju­nior Sports­woman of the Year for 2014, at the First Cit­i­zens Sport Foun­da­tion Youth Awards Gala Cer­e­mo­ny at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain.

In cop­ping the First Cit­i­zens award Smith pre­vailed over 16 oth­er fe­males in the var­i­ous com­pet­ing cat­e­gories of sport.

Pri­or to be­ing award­ed this pres­ti­gious ho­n­our, the then Holy Name Con­vent, Port-of-Spain, stu­dent had be­come T&T's chess 'queen' in 2013, win­ning the Open Na­tion­al fe­male cham­pi­onship tour­na­ment, end­ing the sev­en-year reign of Adi­ti Soon­dars­ingh.

In 2014, she be­came T&T's first-ever Woman Fide (F�d�ra­tion In­ter­na­tionale des �checs or World Chess Fed­er­a­tion) Mas­ter af­ter she fin­ished third in the women's com­pe­ti­tion at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Un­der-20 Cham­pi­onships in Cos­ta Ri­ca.

She al­so 'cap­tured' five vic­to­ries in ten games at the Chess Olympiad in Nor­way. At the Pan Amer­i­can Games in Mex­i­co she won three match­es and drew four and was al­so T&T's Un­der-20 and Un­der-18 fe­male cham­pi­on.

Hers is a rise to the top from her first over­seas com­pe­ti­tion in Flori­da in the Un­der-7 cat­e­go­ry in 2005, and win­ning lo­cal­ly in her age group for every year since then. In 2006 she par­tic­i­pat­ed in her first Pan Am games in Ecuador and won bronze at the CAC games in El Sal­vador.

She has rep­re­sent­ed T&T at four con­sec­u­tive Olympiads in Ger­many, Rus­sia, Turkey and Nor­way. In 2012 she check­mat­ed her way to T&T's on­ly women's gold medal at the first Carif­ta Chess Cham­pi­onships held in Trinidad and Un­der-15 sil­ver at the Pan Am Games in Venezuela.

In 2013 she took sil­ver in the Un­der-16 cat­e­go­ry at Carif­ta in Ja­maica and sil­ver again at Un­der-17 lev­el at Pan Am in Trinidad.

Q: Where were you born and where did you grow up?

A: I was born in Mar­aval and grew up in Mar­aval and Barataria.

What schools did you at­tend?

Holy Name Con­vent Sec­ondary, 2009-2015, and Holy Name Prepara­to­ry School, 2003-2009.

What are your hob­bies and in­ter­ests oth­er than chess, of course?

I al­so en­joy play­ing League of Leg­ends, an on­line game, with my friends, as well as read­ing fic­tion based books.

How did you be­come so in­volved in play­ing chess?

My fa­ther taught all four sib­lings to play chess, as he is the gen­er­al sec­re­tary for Fide on the Amer­i­can Con­ti­nent. He would drag us along to al­most all of­fi­cial tour­na­ments. They were al­so cham­pi­ons in their age groups and won CAC medals in El Sal­vador and Puer­to Ri­co so I had lots of learn­ing al­so with them.

Tell us about your in­spi­ra­tion and mo­ti­va­tion to play chess and be­com­ing so good at it.

Pri­mar­i­ly, the on­ly rea­son I played chess was be­cause I had no oth­er al­ter­na­tive. My dad put me in it, and I couldn't get out so I fig­ured it made no sense to play bad­ly, and so I didn't re­sist play­ing the sport (laugh­ing). How­ev­er as time pro­gressed, I saw it as a fun ac­tiv­i­ty; many of my friend­ships were made at chess. The game it­self got more in­ter­est­ing, and as I got bet­ter, I slow­ly be­gan to grow a lik­ing to­wards it since I start­ed see­ing my­self progress over the years. I was nev­er ex­act­ly mo­ti­vat­ed at one point, it's all been a jour­ney where I got bet­ter and bet­ter at the sport, and that in it­self mo­ti­vat­ed me.

What are some of the chal­lenges you face as a chess play­er?

There are two main chal­lenges. First would be man­ag­ing school work and chess train­ing. Sec­ond would be get­ting fund­ing for train­ing and trav­el abroad to rep­re­sent the coun­try at in­ter­na­tion­al events. Half of the time my par­ents would have to pay for my trips, air­fare, ac­com­mo­da­tion, meals, train­ing etc. More sup­port from the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs would be great­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed for my fu­ture en­deav­ours.

What do you con­sid­er your great­est achieve­ment so far?

Ob­tain­ing my Woman Fide Mas­ter ti­tle has to be my great­est pride right now.

Of all your prizes and awards, which do you rate as ex­treme­ly spe­cial?

My Fe­male Youth of the Year award, from the First Cit­i­zens Sports Foun­da­tion, is very dear to me.

What is your most trea­sured pos­ses­sion?

That will have to be my life and fam­i­ly.

What goals and/or am­bi­tions do you have?

At this point, sev­er­al of my per­son­al goals have been achieved, now I'm aim­ing to­wards a Woman In­ter­na­tion­al Mas­ter ti­tle and my uni­ver­si­ty ca­reer.

If you had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet any­one in the world, who would it be and why?

In the whole world? Of course it would be the one and on­ly Chi­no Moreno from my favourite band Deftones. He's my idol, he writes great mu­sic and has an amaz­ing voice, he's very lov­ing to his friends, fam­i­ly and to his fans. I think he's a great demon­stra­tion of "do­ing what you love most" and that's a qual­i­ty that I tru­ly ad­mire.

Who was your hero grow­ing up out­side of your fam­i­ly?

Grow­ing up, I had a chess coach who re­al­ly in­flu­enced me. In­ter­na­tion­al Mas­ter Raul Perez Her­nan­dez from Cu­ba. In all hon­esty, I al­ways felt like I was his favourite stu­dent. He'd al­ways be pos­i­tive; even when I'd lose a match, I'd still get re­ward­ed with hugs and some­times even choco­lates and sweet drinks. When every­one else was dis­ap­point­ed in me, he was al­ways sup­port­ive and I re­al­ly miss him for that.

Up­com­ing events, com­pe­ti­tions?

Lots. There are the Pan Ams Un­der-18, CAC U-18, CAC U-20 and my A- Lev­els.

What do you see for the fu­ture of the sport of chess in T&T?

There is a great im­me­di­ate fu­ture for the fe­male chess play­ers since a lot of progress is be­ing made for us fe­males.

What makes for a re­al­ly good chess play­er?

One who is al­ways hum­ble in vic­to­ry, and grace­ful in de­feat.

What ad­vice would you give to the coun­try's youths to cre­ate a bet­ter so­ci­ety?

Study hard, dream big and work to­wards your dreams...and read this ar­ti­cle! (laugh­ing)

De­scribe your­self in two words, one be­gin­ning with J, the oth­er with S, the ini­tials of your name.

Hmm that would be jaun­ty and sin­cere.