Mallis, of Silver Spring, is captain of the Free State Flounder, one of the teams in the D.C. Chess League. He has been playing with the team for 12 years.
How long have you been playing chess?
I’ve been playing chess since 1998. I learned the basic moves [when] I was maybe about 8 years old, and then really started to play the game when I was in junior high school.
Why did you start?
I like board games and games of strategy, and it was social in a different way. I wasn’t very good, [but] I wasn’t lousy so I was motivated to continue. In college, it became my social opportunity to play with people who were not my friends, and after college, I took on leadership roles — was the director of our league for a few years.
Is it hard finding the time to play?
A single game can start around 8 o’clock and end around 1 a.m. on a Friday night. Then there are tournaments when games can take seven hours or eight hours. But for me, for this year, unfortunately at the beginning of the season one of my best friends Michael, who was the captain, he died very suddenly, and we sort of were scrambling about what to do. We wanted to honor his legacy, to carry forward this season.
How does chess influence other areas of your life?
There are so many distractions in our lives — as adults you’re always busy, running around. It’s nice to have a calming space where you can just focus on one thing without the distractions of phones or TVs or people. Also there’s just the logic of playing chess. It helps to focus me in other areas of my life, to tackle problems in a structured way, not irrationally. Chess teaches you to think logically, planning one step after the next.
— Rachel Baye
