Dewain’s Lecture at the Citrus College Chess Club

BY, STEPHANIE “PASSION” MENDEZ

November 7, 2010

On Nov. 4th, The Chess Club had the privilege of experiencing a wonderful lecture by a wise man named Dewain Barber. Dewain is the owner and CEO of American Chess Equipment and has previously been a teacher in High School and Middle School. Dewain has traveled most of the world and over 71 countries! He was talking about playing chess in other countries and that it didn’t matter what language he spoke or they spoke because chess is a language of its own. He has played in chess in countries such as China and Mexico.

He gave the chess club members some very helpful strategies and guidelines to success in the game of chess. Dewain stated, “Do you know I speak two international languages. The first one is Chess and the other one is Smile.” He was telling us that those two languages were all that he needed when he traveled the world! He then went on to talk to us about Chess strategy and really emphasized on having fun. Sometimes, having fun is the one rule that some players can tend to forget!

It’s important to not be so hard on ourselves and to learn from our mistakes as Mr. Barber had pointed out.  He said to “Lighten up with your games.” The next tip or advice that he gave us was to make sure we control the Center! It’s very important to control the center and he mentioned that a lot of chess players forget that. He also stated, “If you ignore the center you are committing your own chess suicide!”

Dewain went on to some more advice about improving your endgame. Studying chess should be focused on studying the endgame. If you really know how to end the game, you can win mostly every time.

Dewain was telling us stories about his ventures in chess throughout the lecture. He told us many fascinating stories about him competing with Chess Masters but one that was really interesting and a story that most can
relate to was a story about when Dewain had gone to a Simul with 64 other people to play against GM Walter Browne. GM Browne is a 6-time US Chess champion and he played against all 65 players at one time during this simul. As most of us have experience a simul, this one was definitely at another level. Dewain was very happy to report that in this match against Walter Browne he had the opportunity to draw; not too bad for playing against a 6-time US Chess Champion!

There was such a wealth of information at this lecture and I was glad to have attended. Dewain Barber was
an excellent guest who was funny, kept us interested and provided so much helpful information for future
games. In the future, if you unfortunately missed this lecture, I recommend that next time Dewain visits us
everyone should attend.

(you can view the article in its original format here.)