The boy who learned from the help button

Detailed summary

MUSCAT, NOV 10 The chessboard was ready before the guest was. In the living room of the Al Riyami family home, the pieces stood waiting, the clock...

The chessboard was ready before the guest was. In the living room of the Al Riyami family home, the pieces stood waiting, the clock set beside them, as if this house prepared a game for its visitors the way other houses prepare coffee. Mohammed bin Salim al Riyami, 18, had agreed to an interview with the Observer; first, though, there would be chess.

The clock was set to three minutes each. As his visitor’s position quietly collapsed, Mohammed narrated it — what each move was doing to the game, what had gone unseen — then agreed, the way one indulges a beginner, to stop the clock and play without time, so that the questions could find room between the moves.

The story does not begin at a chessboard. “I started to discover chess through my mom’s phone”, he says. “I had never actually seen a chessboard at that age.” He was 4, and each evening he waited for his mother to come home from work — for her, and for her phone — teaching himself alone, move by move, asking the app’s help icon whenever he needed. “No one told me the secrets”, he says. “I just discovered new strategies and plans on my own. That’s when my mom discovered how smart I am.”

Oman’s chess community has noticed. At the Sultan Qaboos Sports Complex, where Mohammed plays, national team coach Musallam al Wadhahi puts it simply: “He has the potential to be the first grandmaster from Oman”.

Behind that potential stands International Master Ismail Kareem, a Moroccan coach and a player on his country’s national team, who has taught Mohammed for 11 years — “the best teacher ever”, his role model ahead of any grandmaster.

The proof hangs in a cabinet: gold at 7, and medals enough that when he wore them all for a

Mohammed’s mother remembers the day she discovered what her son had taught himself.

“One day he told me, mama, come, we play chess on your phone”, she says. “I thought to myself, how does he know how to play?” From the sofa she watched her small son move the pieces correctly — she was taking light chess…

The…

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