Principled? Focused? A national champ? Check
Ex-UMBC student Paikidze seeks to defend her title
For weeks, she has sat hunched over a chess board for up to eight hours a day, mulling tactics and playing out a myriad of moves in her mind.
Ten minutes of this would fry your brain. Yet this is how Nazi Paikidze, 23, prepares for the $100,000 U.S. Women’s Chess Championship, which begins Tuesday in St. Louis.
Paikidze, who attended UMBC, is the defending national champion and one of the game’s brightest young stars. She is also a bellwether for women’s rights, having boycotted the Women’s World Championship in Iran in February, where the entrants were required to wear hijabs (veils). Was her decision difficult? “Of course it was,” Paikidze said. “This is the first world championship that I’ve ever qualified for. Would I do it again? Absolutely.”
Several others also boycotted the tournament but did so for safety reasons, she said.
“When I first came out and said I wouldn’t play, I was sure most of the women would support me,” Paikidze said. “I talked to almost all of [the entrants] and, while nobody was happy that it was held in Iran, they were not ready to give up the tournament.”
Her singular stand against oppression didn’t surprise Dr. Alan Sherman, the UMBC chess coach.
“As a player, Nazi [pronounced nahZEE] is a fighter,” he said. “Here, she was just fighting in a different arena.”
Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, Paikidze, 23, emigrated to the United States five years ago for college. Her first name means “delicate” in Georgian but doesn’t suit her competitive makeup. At UMBC, long a chess power, teammates called her “The Black Widow.” There, she helped the Retrievers to three straight NCAA Final Four appearances (2013-2015).
Sherman called Paikidze’s stratagem “a balanced style with a sound foundation, but also the potential for some sharp tactics.”
Paikidze lives in Las Vegas with her husband, Greg Barnes, whom she met while both were at UMBC. Barnes, a mechanical engineer, is from Westminster.
“He was playing poker in The Commons [a student center] and I was playing chess, and he expressed an interest in the game,” she said. “I showed him some moves and he improved a lot.” They’ve been married two years. Long a chess buff, Paikidze learned the game at age 4 from her father. A year later, she was beating him regularly.
In first grade, in Georgia, students were required to learn chess. Paikidze was hooked. At 6, she was playing tournaments and honing her craft.
“I was never too upset about losing because I always learned something,” she said. “I don’t make the same mistake twice.”
At 9, she won the first of her four European Youth Championships in a grueling seven-hour match that featured 160 moves by each player — still the longest game Paikidze has ever played. By 16, she was twice World Youth Chess titlist. In 2010, she became a Woman’s Grandmaster; two years later, an International Master. But ego has played no part in her ascent.
“Chess is a skill you can always get better at,” Paikidze said. “It’s always challenging. You can play it every day and still have much to learn.”
In 2015, Paikidze — then 21 — placed second in her first U.S. championship. Last year she won it all, defeating Irina Krush, a seven-time champ, for the $25,000 grand prize. She is braced for a rematch with Krush, a fiery Ukrainian-born player who, after a loss, has been known to hurl her king across the room.
Krush “is absolutely the strongest player in the [12-woman] field,” Paikidze said. “I’m sure she wants revenge.”
Hence, the training regimen, a nod to Paikidze’s demeanor. She has learned to think as many as 10 moves ahead and sometimes plays chess blindfolded to better visualize her options.
“Do I have a computer in my head? I wish,” she said. “Practice is very tiring; I take breaks when I feel like I am not thinking straight anymore.”
She works out regularly, plays squash, swims and runs 4 miles every other day. But even those routines are micromanaged.
“I’m extremely organized. I plan for the next hour, day and month,” Paikidze said. “It’s very productive to always think ahead.” So, how long will she compete in chess? “Forever, until I die.” Paikidze said she’ll remain a supporter of women’s rights and a role model for girls interested in the game.
“Growing up, every time I played I’d be one of three or five females, along with hundreds of males,” she said. “Today, it’s almost still like that.”
That’s why, when a youngster begging for her autograph asks what’s her favorite chess piece, Paikidze replies:
“A pawn, because a pawn has the potential to become a queen.”