So it's pretty special when he plays Bailey, 9, to a draw like he did on Friday afternoon. "Well nobody won, but I didn't lose to you!" Odeion exclaimed over the stalemate.
The boys participate in a chess program new to the school. The Salt Lake City-based 100% For Kids Foundation provided $1,900 to teachers Kevin Bonnell and Brian Nash in August to launch the initiative.
Bonnell and Nash say studies show that exposure to chess over consecutive years augments youngsters' ability to learn.
"Sometimes it's hard to get results from a child in a traditional way," said Bonnell, Odeion and Bailey's teacher. As Lincoln Elementary's de facto grandmasters, Bonnell and Nash have high hopes that their students' academic progress will mirror the improvement in their chess acumen.
"We wanted to try something different, because success on standardized tests is so important due to the requirements of No Child Left Behind [President Bush's education-reform law]," Bonnell said.
Bonnell wants to include chess lessons - 15 to 20 minutes each week - as an extension of math class. He and other teachers will track student scores through next year to see if they improve.
Holding a thin-bound teacher's guide that outlines how and why chess can be included in the elementary curriculum, Bonnell expounded on the centuries-old game's value to the human brain.
He said children who play chess are actually "playing math. It's full of patterns and geometry. It could help a student get past a bad math experience."
Bailey and Odeion played a match during lunch to get over a bad chess experience: Despite their self-professed prowess on the board - they advertise themselves as the two best players in the class - the two suffered a loss just before lunch.
Bonnell had separated the class into two teams to play a match on an 8-by-8 fabric board laid out on the floor. The pieces range in size from about 1 1/2 feet to over 2 feet tall. Bailey and Odeion were on the same side, the other team won.
The students on each team took turns moving the pieces. Everyone spoke at once. Everyone shouted orders simultaneously. The student whose turn it was, more often than not, ignored the background din and did what he or she wanted.
Bailey and Odeion blamed the defeat on their less able teammates.
"They didn't do the right strategy," Bailey complained. "They didn't look before they moved."
"They didn't assume all the moves before they were done," Odeion declared. Yet the 8-year-old sagely noted that he now knows that victory is not the ultimate goal - like he used to think when his dad taught him the game three years earlier.
"When I was that age, I thought winning was everything," he said. "Now, I know it's just about having fun."
mcronin@sltrib.com
