Buckeye Chess Club
Amidst the contests of physical fitness at this year’s Arnold Sports Festival, an 8-year-old Dublin girl will go toe-to-toe with festival namesake Arnold Schwarzenegger in a battle of wits.
Emma Cheng, a third-grader at Thomas Elementary School, is scheduled to challenge Schwarzenegger in a chess match on the main stage of the new Arnold Kids Fitness Expo at the Ohio Expo Center, March 7-8.
This will be the first time chess has been part of the Arnold in Columbus, but a blitz chess event was organized at the Arnold Classic Brasil in 2014. Kelly Bloomfield, adviser for Buckeye Chess Club at The Ohio State University, pitched the idea for the match pitting Schwarzenegger against the pint-sized prodigy as soon as he heard chess would be part of the Expo. Bloomfield is now organizer of the Arnold Schwarzenegger Scholastic Chess Classic.
Cheng may be young, but chess is already old hat to her. She has achieved an Elo rating of 1434 – the Elo rating system was started to calculate chess players’ skills, though it is now used for rankings in a variety of one-on-one games – and, as of November, was the No. 4 ranked Girls United States Chess Federation player in Ohio. She is a student of Columbus Chess Lessons, a Worthington-based organization specializing in cultivating advanced chess players.
“She’s been playing with the CCL for the past four or five years,” says Bloomfield. “She even made one of my eighth-grade players cry.”
Cheng practices via private lessons and by playing other students under the watchful eye of chess masters such as coach and program director Alan Casden. She also takes Internet-based lessons through CCL, taught by an all-star group of chess talent including Goran Vojinovic, Atanas Kizov and Jovana Vojinovic.
She won’t have an easy time of it against her hulking opponent. Schwarzenegger is an avid chess player himself, often setting up the board between shoots on his films to keep his mind sharp. He’s played against top-level talent, including renowned chess master Garry Kasparov.
But Bloomfield isn’t convinced Schwarzenegger has a chance.
“It won’t even be close,” he says. “She’ll wipe the floor with him.”
Though Cheng will get the brightest spotlight of the chess players at the Arnold, others will get their shot at glory via the tournament. And even those who don’t take part in the official competitions will get to enjoy the game thanks to the two enormous chess boards with life-size pieces, shades of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, on the Expo floor.
Kyle Banfill is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at hbealer@cityscenecolumbus.com.
