It was Myiesha Maunder’s grandfather who introduced her to chess.
“She just came home one day and said ‘mummy I want to play chess’,” Myiesha’s mother, Cherry, says.
So her parents bought her a chessboard and she began playing in earnest. But the game became more than just a hobby a few years ago when the Parkwood Green primary school pupil’s talent for strategy rose to the fore.
Now Myiesha is Australia’s reigning under 12 female chess champion, winning the national competition last month, less than six years after taking up the sport.
Cherry says Myiesha, 11, trained with her coach Grant Szuveges every day in the lead-up to this year’s tournament, after coming runner-up last year and the year before.
“She was ecstatic when she won … she trained every day for three hours,” Cherry says.
Myiesha and her coach focused on tactics for middle games, end games and memorised openings.
The Brimbank resident also loves maths and playing the piano, and she dreams of becoming a chess coach one day, her mother says.
