The boy who learned from the help button

MUSCAT, NOV 10

The chessboard was ready before the guest was. In the living room of the Al Riyami family home, the pieces stood waiting, the clock set beside them, as if this house prepared a game for its visitors the way other houses prepare coffee. Mohammed bin Salim al Riyami, 18, had agreed to an interview with the Observer; first, though, there would be chess.

The clock was set to three minutes each. As his visitor’s position quietly collapsed, Mohammed narrated it — what each move was doing to the game, what had gone unseen — then agreed, the way one indulges a beginner, to stop the clock and play without time, so that the questions could find room between the moves.

The story does not begin at a chessboard. “I started to discover chess through my mom’s phone”, he says. “I had never actually seen a chessboard at that age.” He was 4, and each evening he waited for his mother to come home from work — for her, and for her phone — teaching himself alone, move by move, asking the app’s help icon whenever he needed. “No one told me the secrets”, he says. “I just discovered new strategies and plans on my own. That’s when my mom discovered how smart I am.”

Mohammed bin Salim al Riyami with his family.

Oman’s chess community has noticed. At the Sultan Qaboos Sports Complex, where Mohammed plays, national team coach Musallam al Wadhahi puts it simply: “He has the potential to be the first grandmaster from Oman”.

Behind that potential stands International Master Ismail Kareem, a Moroccan coach and a player on his country’s national team, who has taught Mohammed for 11 years — “the best teacher ever”, his role model ahead of any grandmaster.

The proof hangs in a cabinet: gold at 7, and medals enough that when he wore them all for a

photograph, their weight pulled visibly at his neck.

Mohammed’s mother remembers the day she discovered what her son had taught himself.

“One day he told me, mama, come, we play chess on your phone”, she says. “I thought to myself, how does he know how to play?” From the sofa she watched her small son move the pieces correctly — she was taking light chess classes herself at the time, and still the game grew difficult. When she hesitated at her own turn, he reached over and showed her the help icon that suggests the best move. “Then I started playing with him on an actual board”, she says. “I thought to myself, I have to get someone to teach him chess.”

ANAND VISIT

The teacher she found was Kareem, and the boy moved quickly. In May 2016, when five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand visited Muscat, Mohammed, then 8, sat down opposite him in a simultaneous exhibition — his first. Anand won every board that day. The family kept the photograph.

Mohammed bin Salim al Riyami (right) with his father at the Chess Olympiad in Uzbekistan.

Through the lockdowns of 2020, the lessons with Kareem carried on online, and the house gained a second player: Mohammed’s younger brother, Saeed, who wanted to be like him. “I started getting relieved”, their mother says, “because there was somebody else in the family who will sit and play with Mohammed.”

By then he was winning often enough for the phone to ring. “Different clubs in Oman started calling us and wanted Mohammed to join their team”, she says.

CHESS OLYMPIAD

At the Chess Olympiad in Uzbekistan in September, the Candidate Master title came within reach. “I was about to get the CM title, but I messed up — I touched my king”, he says. “That one mistake cost me the title. My last opponent knew this, so he went for a draw on purpose, just to deny it. Annoying — but what to do, this is a game.”

The shrug lasts one breath: “There’s another Olympiad coming in two years. I might be part of it if I really fight hard.”

Ask what chess has done to his life, and he talks about everything but chess — decisions, patience, even football: “How do we score a goal? You’ve got to go in front to score the goal.”

Ask what Oman can do for its players, and the answer is ready: more international tournaments, more travel, more meeting “the other chess cultures”. Everything else he needs to reach grandmaster one day, he believes he already has.

In the evening’s last game, his guest played a move he did not expect. He laughed — in friendly games, he protested, he plays softer while he is teaching.

Then he reset the pieces and showed his opponent what should have been played.

Mohammed bin Salim al Riyami during a game of chess.