Stuart Finney, a freshman at Barrington High School who will be competing with the U.S. chess team in the world championships in Brazil in 2010, gets a lesson from senior chess master David Griego in his Barrington home.

The Providence Journal / John Freidah

BARRINGTON — Stuart Finney got to spend about two weeks at a Turkish beach resort playing games this month. And it was work.

From Nov. 11 to Monday, the 14-year-old Barrington High School student was one of 1,300 chess players from ages 8 to 18 playing in the World Youth Chess Championships in Antalya, Turkey. It was a productive trip; he was initially ranked 60th in the 138-player field for his age group, 14 and under.

He wound up with 6 out of a possible 11 points in the 11-round tournament, good enough to be in an 18-way tie for 43rd place.

“He played above his rating,” his father, Steven, said of Stuart’s performance. “I’m pleased he held it together.”

The tournament featured players from around the world competing in groups based on age and gender. They played in a cavernous convention hall, the boards set on long line after long line of tables.

His father was able to get there for a couple of days and wrangled a floor pass for Nov. 15. Stuart’s board was at the end of one of the lines. Steven got to the board just in time to see his son make the game-winning move.

Coming off a loss the day before, Stuart said he needed that one badly.

“The game went well for me,” Stuart observed on his blog. “I almost won it very quickly, and then found myself having to win it all over again.”

The schedule was a game a day for the most part. He had two games on Monday, Nov. 16, and Tuesday was a day off. Stuart said he didn’t get a chance for much sightseeing though. He had to use the day off to work on his world history and pre-calculus homework.

And then, there were scouting reports.

Stuart said once he found out who his next opponent was, the first stop was an Internet-connected computer. Tournaments regularly post move-by-move accounts of games. So, like a football coach getting game film of next week’s opponent, Stuart said the tournament databases gave him a chance to anticipate how his next opponent would play.

He said he found it valuable and was surprised that more players weren’t doing it.

“I was preparing almost all of the time,” he said. “It seemed a lot of them didn’t prepare.”

Though he didn’t expect to win the championship, Stuart still had a lot at stake at the tournament. FIDE, the international chess federation, ranks players on a scale that takes into account the games they play and the caliber of the competition. A tournament, like the one in Antalya, gave him a chance to go up against higher-ranked players and enhance his international standing.

Over the 11 rounds of games, players got one point for a win, a half point for a draw and no points for a loss. The best possible score was 11.

With such a small range, every half-point counted. Peruvian Jorge Cori won Stuart’s section with nine points. At six points, Stuart tied for 43rd. Had he gotten seven, he’d have tied for 18th; at 7.5, a tie for seventh.

Stuart’s international rating going into the tournament was 2,007, but his father said they felt that was low, that Stuart was capable of competing with players at the 2,100 level, and Stuart’s play bore that out.

His six points came from five wins and two draws. The lowest-rated player to beat him was rated 2,173, the other three losses were to players higher than that. He won against a player rated 2,114 and drew another rated at 2,098.

“I played close to the people above me,” Stuart said.

His father estimated that the results will increase Stuart’s rating by about 11 points.

“It’s not a massive amount,” he said. “It’s a slow grind to climb up the rankings.”