Eagan Student Ranks Among Nation's Elite Chess Players

Local high school student Prashantha Amarasinghe won't forget his first chess match against chess grandmaster Dmitry Gurevich.

Amarasinghe, an Eagan resident, squared off against the nationally-recognized Gurevich during a tournament in 2009. He may have lost, but Amarsinghe's last-ditch sacrifice of his own queen to take down two of Gurevich's pieces caught the grandmaster's eye.

Gurevich had a good reason to be impressed. Amarasinghe, a St. Thomas Academy senior, is a formidable chess player with an impressive list of tournament accomplishments. Earlier this month, Amarasinghe tied for first place in the 2011 National Youth Action Championship West, a K-12 high school chess tournament held in Irvine, Calif.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg for Amarasinghe, who was named a U.S. National Chess Master by the U.S. Chess Federation in March and has been a U.S. National High School Chess Co-Champion for two years running.

Amarasinghe's chess career began in second grade in Ann Arbor, Mich., when his mother taught him how to play the game.

“We both didn’t have a clue what we were doing," Amarasinghe recalled, laughing.

But that quickly changed when Amarasinghe joined a chess club and began practicing with his father, Sisira, who is also an accomplished player. Amarasinghe participated in his first tournament when he was nine years old, but his first big break as a chess player came when he was honored as the 2006 Foxwoods International U1600 Chess Champion.

Now, Amarasinghe spends several hours a week studying chess under his former opponent, Gurevich, who agreed to coach the up-and-coming player. The two regularly meet online to discuss chess strategy and conduct lessons over Skype.

To hone his skills, he also studies tactics in his family's "chess library"—which is filled with hundreds of chess-related books. He also squares off against opponents using an online chess game.

Many of Amarasinghe's matches are shorter, timed games, but the longest single match he ever played lasted over six hours. Of the 300 players in the tournament, he and his opponent were the last two still playing, Amarasinghe said. At one point, he recalled with a smile, the janitor assigned to clean up after the event and asked them if they had finished yet.

Amarasinghe's father, a World Chess Federation Arbiter, says he's proud of his son's tournament accomplishments and long list of chess-related honors. But Sisira Amarasinghe also hopes his son will take away more than just medals or trophies from his participation in the game.

“Chess is confined to 64 squares with a limited number of pieces, but the things that happen in chess are analogous to what happens in life," Sisira said. “In chess you never lose, you either win or learn, and you can apply the same thing in life."

Amarasinghe, who plans to study at the University of Minnesota, said he loves the complexity of the game.

"What I like is that the better you get at chess, the more you realize what you don’t know," Amarasinghe said.