The clock is ticking and Erik Friedlander is calculating his next move.

Seeing an opening, he moves his Chess piece forward and hits his opponent’s clock. After many similar exchanges, Friedlander, the president of Paly’s Chess Club, helps Paly make a three-way tie in the 2004 Santa Clara Valley Chess League.

The Paly Chess Club participates in various competitions throughout the school year, such as the one hosted by Santa Clara, a scholastic chess league in which schools such as Monta Vista, Gunn, and Paly clash for the top spot. This The Santa Clara competition entails weekly meetings, in which the top seven contenders from the participating schools play against each other in seven games.

This year, the Paly club was not able to participate in the Santa Clara competition because many of its members were in fall sports, but the group plans to participate in the next two tournaments; the Santa Clara County Scholastic Championships and the statewide Calchess Scholastic Championships, which Paly won in 2003. In these competitions, contestants place as individuals and play in six rounds. Each win earns one point for the competitor’s school, a draw takes a half a point, and a loss receives zero points. To determine which school wins, the first five players’ points are tallied up according to their school.

The most exciting of the contests is the statewide tournament. According to Friedlander, hundreds of high school students attend and there are even non-high school participants.

Friedlander is waiting in anticipation for the next two contests, but does not know how the members will fare, as six out of the eight club members are new additions to the team, and have not played in competitions. "A lot of our good players graduated," club member Chris Clayton said.

But as long as members have fun while playing out their strategies, the club’s goal is achieved.

"The purpose of the chess club is to play chess, participate in inter-school competitions, [partake] in local tournaments, and have fun doing it," Friedlander said.

In past years, the focus of the club has been improving individuals’ skills, although this year the club has leaned towards just enjoying chess.

According to Friedlander, the club has about eight regular members, and a few more that come in every so often. The club is all male, which is not surprising since there are generally more males than females in chess. According to Friedlander, there are usually only four to five girls for every hundred people in the statewide tournament. There are more girls in the elementary school levels, but as the levels get higher, the gender scale becomes more and more unbalanced. Friedlander attributes this to the false pretense that girls who play chess are abnormal/unpopular.

"[People think] chess is not a very cool thing for girls to do," Friedlander said.

Still, the club is always open for more people to join, no matter whether they are male or female. "We could [always] use more people in Chess Club," Club member Alex Dehnert said.

Club Day has been the only advertising the group has done so far, but the Chess Club plans to announce more club activities on In Focus second semester. Chess club meets in room 301 on Wednesdays after school and Fridays at lunch. For more information, contact Erik Friedlander at [email protected].