Hampton freshman named to 18 Under Eighteen

Chess may not be the easiest game to learn.

But it doesn’t seem to have been a challenge for Luke Martin, who started playing as a third-grader and likes to share his knowledge with others.

“I’ve been teaching since I was 11,” the Hampton High School freshman said, “and I’ve been in tournaments since I was 10.”

His continuing educational efforts helped earn him membership in Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania’s 18 Under Eighteen Class of 2023, a program that recognizes the talents of young people throughout the region.

Junior Achievement will honor the students during a Feb. 7 event in the UPMC Club at Acrisure Stadium.

Luke, 15, is an instructor with the Queens Gambit Chess Institute in Shadyside, a nonprofit founded by prodigy Ashley Lynn Priore with the goal of introducing the game to children, especially girls, and promoting it as a way to cultivate decision-making skills and having the potential to effect societal change for the better.

“The youngest I taught was 4 years old,” Luke said, matching Priore’s age when she started playing.

She has served as Luke’s mentor, teaching him and then encouraging him to become an instructor at a summer chess camp after he’d finished fifth grade.

“The kids caught on quickly,” he said. “It ended up working fine.”

He continued to provide education while honing his own skills by participating in tournaments, in which he excelled: The Queens Gambit governing board voting him most valuable chess player in 2020.

“Then covid hit,” Luke said. “We couldn’t teach in-person, so I had to teach online, which was really difficult.”

With the relative return to normalcy, he is enlisting Priore and her experience in helping to organize a chess tournament at his school. Luke plans to watch the proceedings closely with an eye toward running future competitions in the area.

As far as instruction, he starts with the basics: the names of the pieces and the moves each is allowed to make, which he concedes can be confusing. For example, a pawn can advance one space diagonally if capturing another piece, but just one space forward otherwise.

Once novices start to grasp the rules, Luke teaches them about the opening and middle parts of the game, and the variety of possibilities once everything gets going in earnest.

“I like chess because not one game is similar,” he said. “The first couple of moves can be the same, but after that, there are thousands of possibilities.”

Drawing on his deep understanding of the game, Luke writes chess curricula and builds relationships with schools and community centers to bring chess into the lives of children who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity, according to his 18 Under Eighteen biography.

Besides chess, Luke swims and plays dekhockey, and he has early experience as an entrepreneur, starting Somethingsmellsfishy cat treats when he was 8.

“After noticing there were more treats at the store for dogs than cats, Luke decided to make his own homemade cat treats using ALDI’s canned salmon,” the JA biography states. “He sold his treats to teachers at his school, community events, and garage sales in other neighborhoods.”

More information about Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania is at westernpa.ja.org, and Queens Gambit Chess Institute, www.tqgchess.institute.