What’s your favorite game? Instead of a sport or a video game, for Ranadheer Tripuraneni, senior, it’s the game of chess. He started playing chess when he was five, and went on to start a chess club at LZHS his sophomore year.

“I know a lot of people over dramatize this but it really was love at first sight,” Tripuraneni said. “I just loved how all of the pieces came together to form crazy combinations; there is no definite answer to anything. You’re constantly thinking and evaluating and trying to find new types of variations just to marginally increase your position move by move.”

Tripuraneni achieved his highest success in chess around the age of nine, when he was Illinois State Co-Champion. Then in middle school, his interest waned, and he stopped for a while.

“I saw my time better spent in doing other activities I also really enjoyed like more sports,” Tripuraneni said. “When I came to high school, I realized then that there really was a void in chess in high school.”

Last year, the LZHS chess club beat one of the state qualifiers. But Tripuraneni isn’t all about the scores.

“My goal is not necessarily to get results, it’s rather just to have people love the game itself. Chess has changed me. It’s given me a lot of skills and I want other people to feel and reap the same benefits that it’s provided me,” Tripuraneni said.

Tripuraneni sees the usefulness of skills gained through chess in his everyday life. He says chess has taught him to think two, three, or four steps ahead in real life decision making, and has advanced his analytical thinking.

Justine Repplinger, chess club sponsor, said Tripuraneni enjoys chess so much that he wanted to start a chess club so he could share his joy of chess with others.

“He really enjoys the game, and he likes the strategy involved. He likes the thinking involved. And he likes to share that with others,” Repplinger said.

According to Repplinger, the number one factor that makes Tripuraneni so successful at chess is “that he enjoys it. So combine […] hard work, enjoyment, and being a student of the game, it’s always a good thing.”