Not many people can say that they are an expert at chess let alone make it their hobby and play it as frequently as freshman Vardan Torosyan.

Torosyan started playing chess in the eighth grade and also started challenging his classmates in the eighth grade, then made the decision to continue his hobby at Clark. “I wanted to verse challenging players, and I want to see how many people there were at clark who could actually play,” Torosyan said. He was surprised at the amount of people who actually knew how to play.

Most of Torosyan’s matches have been victories; however, even the greatest of players have some losses throughout their careers. Torosyan has been defeated twice this year, he said, but this did not discourage him. With every loss, Torosyan gets the chance to learn more strategies and techniques. “Each loss is another chance to learn more moves and the more challenging people you verse, the better you get,” Torosyan said.

He started playing chess with just one of his friends, then slowly, more and more freshmen started to become interested. “It used to be just me and my friend then it went from four to five to six [people],” Torosyan said. He usually has a crowd of around eight people watching him with a couple seniors once in a while as well. He tries to get other freshmen to bring their chess boards as well so they can play with teams.

Torosyan’s goal for this year is to compete against every freshman at Clark. Eventually, he said, he would like to have a match with everyone at Clark. He is usually found during lunch in the downstairs covered area.