Quick-thinking Foreman is king of the board

Elton Tucker, Assistant Editor - Sport

He is only nine years old but Laurence Foreman is one of the rising young stars of local chess.  In just two years in the sport, Foreman has won several local titles in his age group and recently competed in the August 3-8 Caribbean Chess Carnival in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, where he defied ill health to place second in the Junior Under-10 age group, which attracted 46 players.

Now a student at Sts Peter and Paul Preparatory, Foreman started learning the sport at age seven while attending St Andrew Preparatory.

His mother, Heather Foreman, explains: "At one of our regular parent-teacher association meetings, chess coach Jeffery Byfield made a presentation and encouraged parents to get their children involved in the sport and I decided to enrol him."

Laurence showed immediate interest in the game.

"I thought it was fun and I had friends in it," he now says.

His coach, Ryan Blackwood, founder of the Chess Whiz Kids Club, of which Foreman is one of the original members, immediately recognised that he had a special talent.

"I saw something in him that I could tap into so I told his mother that I wanted to intensify his training," Blackwood said.

A thinker

He added: "Just by solving a few problems that were set I recognised that this guy is a thinker. He knows how to apply different strategies in solving a problem. There was no linear way of thinking with him. He is always thinking outside the box. After realising that, I started applying it to different problems, problems that I have given to grown ups ... and what I have realised with him he does not think anything is impossible ... he is always willing to try."

Foreman has surely justified his coach's confidence in his ability.

A year after learning the game he was named the most valuable player after leading St Andrew Preparatory to fourth place at the All Island Prep, Primary and Junior High Championships.

Foreman soon moved on to Jamaica Chess Federation tournaments and in one of his first, in 2009, the annual Harold Chang, he played unbeaten and took the amateur and Under-10 crowns with a perfect score.

Last December, he won the national Under-8 title at the National Age Group Championships, which earned him the right to represent his country in international tournaments for that age group. Among his titles this year is the Under-12 title at the Jamaica National Building Society (JNBS) Open which attracted players from Europe, the Caribbean and South America.

In addition to becoming an attorney-at-law, Foreman wants to be a chess Grandmaster at a very young age. It is no wonder that his role model internationally is Magnus Carlsen.

Carlsen, a Norwegian Grandmaster, is 19 years old and the number one player in the world. Just over six years ago, on April 26, 2004 and at age 13 years and 148 days, Carlsen became the third youngest Grandmaster in history. On January 1 this year, at 19 years and 32 days, he became the youngest player in history to be ranked world number one.

Locally, Foreman's role model is Jomo Pitterson, the only local international FIDE Master.