Deerfield High chess champ shares skills with youngsters
Jonathan Kogen
'Kogen, a 17-year-old junior at Deerfield High School, is a National Master, a ranking by the U.S. Chess Federation for players with ratings of 2,200.
Kogen recently swept the Illinois Denker Qualifier tournament field 5-0, and in July he will represent Illinois in the National Denker Tournament in Madison, Wis.
His success should come as little surprise. Taught chess when he was 4 by his mother, emergency room doctor Bonnie Salomon, and later Glenview coach and mentor Tamara Golovey, Kogen has been nurtured in a North Shore hotbed of chess talent, the Highland Park-Deerfield school and club systems.
Kogen's peers include
- Highland Park's Eric Rosen, U.S. prep national champion and now a team captain at the University of Illinois;
- soon-to-become National Master Adarsh Jayakumar, a graduate of Lake Forest Academy;
- National Master Gopal Menon, a rising star at Northeastern University;
- International Master Florin Felecan, another local prodigy.
Adult teachers include Phillip Yontez, a former college and international competitor, and Oleg Trifonov, a Highland Park real estate agent whose USCF rating has eclipsed 2,000.
At 5 feet 9 and 160 pounds, Kogen has an athlete's build — he played basketball as a freshman at Deerfield High School — and a chess master's unwavering focus on a mental workout that requires raw physical stamina for matches lasting as long as six hours.
"I didn't have as much coaching as some players, so I'm somewhat self-taught," he said.
Jerry Neugarten, an organizer of Hpchess.org, a loose federation of area student and adult chess coaches, said:
"To be a National Master as a high school student is just extraordinary. What's unusual about Jonathan is that you would never know it by talking to him. He's just such a modest kid."(more)'
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