Royal robe fits young chess king well

The 16-year-old member of the Catalina Foothills High School chess team was ranked higher than his opponent, so he was expected to win. But a player from New York proved a challenging competitor.

"It was a hard fight all the way down to the end," Brownell said. "I think there was a point when he could have gotten a draw, but I was able to win."

Brownell was in the groove at the 2006 National High (K-12) Championship in Milwaukee April 21-23, and he won both the championship tournament and the speed-chess tournament.

The Catalina Foothills team placed second in the championship tournament. Last year it took home the top prize.

This weekend Brownell, who is home-schooled but plays for the school's team, and some of his teammates are at the 2006 Arizona Scholastic State Championship in Gilbert, east of Phoenix. He's not overconfident about the state competition.

"Just because I won the national championship, it doesn't mean I'm the best chess player," he said. "It just means I had the best tournament."

Still, Brownell's private chess teacher, Levon Altounian, said Brownell could be one of the highest-rated high-school chess players in Arizona. He doesn't crack under pressure.

"He combines the quality of having a huge desire to win without worrying about the loss," Altounian said.

"It's very exciting, in terms that his style of play is very captivating, and very aggressive, so people who watch the games never get bored," he added.

Plus, Altounian said, Brownell is a standout player in his ability to excel in both the blitz — or speed-chess — tournament and the championship tournament.

At the national competition, each player had five minutes in the blitz tournament to make all of his or her moves. In the championship tournament, each player had two hours. The same basic rules apply.

The four-hour matches can get intense. "It's not physical, but you do have to use mental stamina," Brownell said.

Even after a four-hour battle for each other's king, the players don't have much animosity for each other. "It's just chess. It's just a game," he said.

He got into chess with his older brothers, Bryant, now 20, and Jonathon, now 23.

The three brothers have acquired a group of tall trophies that stand in the family's living room.

"It is not possible to describe the euphoria," their dad, Roger, said about how he felt when his son won the national contest.

Robby Adamson, coach of the Catalina Foothills High School chess team, said Landon Brownell is a good player because of his ability to wiggle out of tough situations.

"There are times when he is outplayed by someone, but he finds ways to win," Adamson said. "The sign of a good player is not doing well when you're on top, it's doing well when you're not on top."

Brownell said playing chess didn't come naturally or easily to him.

"You see the patterns by studying and by playing chess a lot," he said. "It takes a long time to do that."

Still, Adamson said Brownell does exhibit natural skill. "You need to be able to see tactics and be able to reason," and he does that well, the coach said.

At this point, Brownell wants to keep playing and see where the game takes him. As he's still only a teenager, his plans are not set in stone.

"If he set his mind to be a chess professional, he could do it," Altounian said.