Submitted Photo Aven Beach, center, celebrates with his parents, Alex and Nikki Beach, after winning the K-3rd vision of the Scholastic State Chess Tournament in Bismarck on March 28.

Aven Beach, 9, has been playing chess for nearly two years after becoming interested in a dusty chess board in their home.

“I thought it was pretty cool. My dad knew a little bit of how to play. We had a chess board from a long time ago, and some of the pieces were missing so we had to replace them with some things, but that’s how I first started,” Aven said. “Figuring out all of the ways that the pieces can move really gets my brain working.”

Beach has been honing his skills ever since either online through chess.com, or by playing at the Minot Library chess club, and had the opportunity to put those skills to the test against 40 other burgeoning chess masters at the Scholastic State Chess Tournament in Bismarck on March 28.

Aven won all five of his matches in the K-3rd grade division, qualifying him to compete for the national Scholastic Chess Tournament in Grand Rapids Michigan the first week of August.

“We got really lucky. This is the first year that they’ll be having this age group at nationals. We’re going to go together, and he’s going to get to try that out and go against the nation’s best,” Aven’s father Alex Beach said.

Aven said he is preparing for nationals by grinding lessons and matches online, and entering other competitions like a recent all-ages rankings based chess tournament. While Aven didn’t win them all, he did come away with the biggest upset award for taking down a higher ranked opponent, which included a $20 windfall.

“Every time I go to a new tournament I feel like I get a smidge better as I go through the tournament. It makes me a stronger opponent,” Aven said.

Alex Beach credited his son’s development to his time at the library chess club, and the access to stronger competition and engaging lessons online.

“For a fairly low cost, you can unlock so much content that kids can spend as much time as they want just feasting on it. He gets a lot of use out of that every day,” Beach said.