“Chess doesn’t care how old you are or what you wear…It cares only about merit,” writes chess player Dorsa Derakhshani for The New York Times.
Derakhshani achieved the titles of Woman Grandmaster and International Master in 2016, and now attends St. Louis University on a chess scholarship as a pre-med student.
Though born and raised in Iran, Derakhshani was banned from playing chess in her home country for not wearing a headscarf at a competition in 2017.
Dorsa Derakhshani: Child Prodigy
For Derakhshani, chess was “a perfect fit” when she started playing at age six, although she knew the moves by only 2 years old. As a child prodigy, Dorsa finished fourth grade at only four years old. She could even read by the age of 1.
“My mom used to make up stories everyday, just to teach me one word,” Derakhshani tells WBUR, “And then she would write that word down on a card and show it to me. And I would learn that word. So I finished first grade when I was 2 years old.”
Because she could not skip grades in Iran at the time, her mother started taking her to different clubs and activities until they finally found chess. Though chess hooked her immediately, Derakhshani recalls struggling with the unpredictability of human action. “You can’t be 100 percent ready and sure that you play good when you go to a tournament,” she explains. She compares playing chess to studying for school: “In studying, just, the more you study, the more it pays off. In chess it’s not like that.”
Banned from Playing for Iran
Nevertheless, Derakhshani adapted quickly to the unpredictability of the game. She won her first tournament at the age of 8. “I came out of nowhere, and I won the tournament,” Derakhshani recalls.
Even then, she did not wear a headscarf to the competition but instead a princess dress and a tiara. “And it was really cute,” she adds. She went on winning tournaments, including the Asian Youth Championship three times, and achieved the Women’s Grandmaster and Open International Master titles while still under the age of 18.
The controversy came in 2017 after both Dorsa and her brother Borna played in a tournament in Gibraltar. While Derakhshani played without a headscarf, her brother played against a competitor representing Israel, Alexander Huzman. An oversight had matched the two, as such competitions are normally avoided by tournament organizers. Instead, they played, and by morning both siblings were banned from playing chess in or for Iran.
“Take Your Freedom of Choice Seriously,” Advises Dorsa Derakhshani
In 2017, Derakhshani wrote an Op-Ed in The New York Times in which she discusses coming to the United States to play chess. At this time, she was already a student in the US and a member of the United States Chess Federation.
Moving to the US was “the wise decision to make – not just for my chess career, but for me as a person,” Derakshani writes. She admires the stability that her life now has and how free she is to express herself, writing, “I am free of fear and of being punished for saying the wrong thing. At last, my heart and mind work in unison.”
Derakhshani currently attends St. Louis University, which has the top chess club in the nation, as well as a medical school. She plans to pursue a career in medicine or dentistry.
Nevertheless, moving to the US came with its own set of difficulties. “I miss my family every second of every day, and the pain of not knowing when I’ll see them again next never goes away,” she writes. “But their belief in me is the reason I had the strength to make this choice.”
The St. Louis Chess Club also has their own Youtube channel, with Derakhshani herself walking viewers through tutorials, games analyses, and more.
