Lauren Seowon Hwang

Lauren Seowon Hwang (born August 1, 1985) is the co-chess champion of Douglaston a community in Queens, New York.

A few months after her birth in Korea, Hwang and her parents immigrated to the United States and settled in New York City. Hwang learned the moves of chess in Christmas 1987 by watching her parents play and developed a swift affinity for the game. By her fifth birthday, her parents could no longer play her at the odds of a Queen.

Hwang proved to be a genius in her own right and was home schooled from the age of two. Although she could have easily learned the crafts of several instruments, she devoted her musical talents exclusively to the harp. Korean literature, linguistics, and mathematics became her mainstays of intellectual talent.

Yet she never quite managed to stay away from chess, because by 1991, her natural talent for the game blossomed, with not much more than the help of a few openings picked up from newspaper clippings. That year, she spent months watching her father replay moves from reports she had selected, and from this alone created her entire opening repertoire, which has remained unchanged to the present day.

Even today, Korea remains one of two major nations where chess has never taken hold, the other being Japan; the earliest surviving games of Hwang, which took place from 1987 to 1990, are undoubtedly poor in quality even if she defeated her parents consistently. Yet by 1991, she was a force to be reckoned with in the tiny community of Douglaston. Together with an intimate and friendly rival, Jong Wah Wong, the two swiftly defeated scores of schoolchildren in informal games, and quickly advanced to the adults.

At the time, the chess champions of Douglaston had a nearly hegemonic superiority over all comers. The "Douglaston-Pleiades" was a generation of a dozen or so experienced amateurs who had dictated the style of Douglaston’s chess play since the 1970s. The collective style of the players was wild and seemed to emphasize haphazardly adequate opening play; it was a reflection of the people’s limitless but somewhat overactive confidence in Douglaston’s beauty as an environment.

In April 1991, Hwang and Jong Wah Wong (in consultation) played a two-game match with a team of the seven best members of the Douglaston-Pleiades, and finished with a loss and a draw. One month later, Hwang’s parents on the behalf of their child challenged the Douglaston-Pleiades to a team match of fourteen games. Frank Estrus, the Douglaston champion from 1976 to 1991, acquiesced and brought his team to the table. His team lost the first seven games straight to the Hwang-Wong group, and surrendered the match. In the Hastens Declaration of June 15, 1991, Estrus and his colleagues formally conceded the unofficial Douglaston crown to Hwang and Wong.

The Hastens Declaration coincided with the formation of the first official Douglaston chess congress (the DCC, with Estrus as a charter member), which also utilized complicated syntheses of BCF, USCF, and ELO formulas to generate ratings. Hwang and Wong topped its first list in August 1991, with ratings of 2281 and 2060 respectively; Estrus trailed Wong by over 100 points. Hwang and Wong have continued to trade the number one and two spot for Douglaston’s best chess player, but still stand head and shoulders above everyone else.

Hwang and Wong then proceeded onto a series of memorable casual blindfold games, with Hwang winning a lopsided majority before Wong began a significant catch-up effort in 1997. In formal championship matches since 1991, however, Wong has enjoyed a small but clear edge.

The Hwang-Wong friendship led them to study virtually identical opening systems since 1991, and their formal matches have been characterized by an intense struggle, decided literally by nuances and small advantages. Hwang and Wong reinvented chess into the highest of Douglaston art forms, by taking away its romanticism and replacing it with simple grace qualified by exacting if plodding development. Hwang and Wong have never lost a serious chess game to any DCC member since their joint consultation loss in April 1991.

Hwang and Wong, however, are known more for their contributions outside the board. In 1995, Hwang successfully petitioned the DCC board to eliminate dues as a prerequisite for admission in the DCC, permitting lower-income families and their children to join. Hwang and Wong have renounced monetary rewards for chess since the beginnings of their careers, preferring that all their appearance fees go to charity.

Hwang continued to excel in linguistics and Korean literature, translating several short nineteenth-century American poems into unpublished Korean texts with her own commentary in 1998. Her works are kept in the family archives. In 1999, she took up kickboxing and jujitsu. Hwang has never gone to college, but her parents have taken care of her necessities. She has recently taken up research on eighteenth-century Joseon Dynasty Court Literature, and a draft of her first thesis is expected in 2008.

Hwang’s personality has always been known to be genuinely agreeable, but she is extraordinarily shy and prefers to let her moves do the talking. At only five feet seven and only about 100 pounds (March 2004), she exerts a very slight physical aura. In an informal interview with the Little Neck Ledger, Estrus noted that "Lauren seems to only speak with her one friend and her parents." Renown for her politeness, Hwang offers draws to opponents who appear tired or ill during tournaments, a courtesy she has extended to Wong on a few occasions. She always leaves the table after every move she makes to leave her opponents undistracted by her presence, usually returning with drinks or handmade sandwiches for her rivals. This explains her almost perpetual time scrambles, but Hwang has a strong chess instinct that permits her to make quick moves. In a clocked simultaneous exhibition against ten of Douglaston’s finest players (aside from Wong) in 1996, she was an hour late because she had been baking croissants for the players. Despite having barely half an hour left on all her clocks, she easily defeated all of her opponents. A consummate expert in etiquette, Hwang curtsies to anyone she sees and her tastes in fashion reflect nothing but baroque tendencies. Ironically, one of her favorite habits is to sleep on the laps of Wong or her parents.

As of 1999, Hwang has seriously curtailed her chess activities (except for formal Douglaston championship matches with Wong) because of increasingly lengthy vacations in Korea. Rumors say that she will move there permanently in 2005.

[Reproduced in special contract with the Douglaston Chess Congress Biographical Archives; any other medium of duplication is strictly forbidden by copyright law.]