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LAS VEGAS On the first day of February, the new chess set appeared atop the circular glass table in the Mo Ostin Center lobby. Nobody with the UCLA mens basketball team knew it was coming. But here it was, delivered by the founder of Poison Pawn Chess, a local company. A crisp black-and-white board with objectively cool redesigned pieces, begging for tactics and gambits.

As Jaime Jaquez Jr. sat down for a conversation, his eyes went wide. Like a spaceship landed a foot in front of him. The hoops talk, clearly, had to wait.

T.J.! the Bruins star called to T.J. Wolf, the programs director of player personnel, who happened to be passing by. They just put this in?

Yes, Wolf replied. And the Poison Pawn guy was in the locker room.

Hell, yeah, Jaquez declared. I want to try to play him.

Hes like a master, Wolf said.

I know, Jaquez replied. Thats why I want to play him.

A couple of months later, UCLA has a spot at the West Regional, and everything is still in development. The Bruins are a chess team, obsessed with competing on the boards in more ways than one.

When the locker room doors swung open Wednesday for NCAA Tournament media availability, there was injured guard Jaylen Clark, tucking away his phone just as an online match with Jaquez ended. A few feet away, fifth-year senior Russell Stong put the finishing touches on a win over Tyger Campbell, just as the Bruins point guard left for press conference duty.

Elsewhere, PlayStations and Xboxes dominate the idle minutes in the lives of college basketball players. Not so at UCLA. The Pac-12 champions prefer to play mind games. We like to think that were mature, Stong said Wednesday, and it was unclear how serious he was being. We like to keep our mind ready. And honestly you can apply chess to life and basketball a lot of the time. Its really just keeping your mind sharp and thinking outside of the box. The answer is always on the board. Its just a matter of finding that answer in the right moment.

Who made the first move here, and when, is unclear.

Campbell might have been on the vanguard, but even he wasnt sure how much credit he could take as he walked down a T-Mobile Arena hallway. I guess Id say I had a hand in the start of that, he said. He took a trip home before his freshman year and his friends brother was playing a lot of chess. Campbell got into it. He brought a physical board and chess set back to Los Angeles and brought the game to the group.

Chronologically, it would line up with Stongs recollection, which places the inception date in the 2018-19 season when he and Campbell were freshmen. They played chess back then occasionally, giving it up in favor of Super Smash Bros. Then one day, we were like, Remember when we used to play chess?' Stong said. And then we started playing again.

It quickly became an obsession of choice. More people on the team play than dont, at this point, Campbell said. Every player has his own board, with two larger community boards available at the Ostin Center. The ubiquity of chess apps allows the Bruins to leave their physical sets at home, as they have this week in Las Vegas, but sate the appetite for competition nevertheless.

And, as no two chess games are alike, everyone comes to it for their own reasons. Its all you, Jaquez said. I play a sport where other guys can make mistakes, whereas you play chess and every move you make is your own. You are the only one that can make a mistake. And the other part I like about it the answer is always right in front of you. You just have to find it. You put this here, you put that right there, theres a right and wrong answer here, of what to do. You just have to find it out. I think thats really cool.

Its a way to engage differently, Clark said. We talk about different stuff on this team. We talk about stocks, money movement, business. This aint your average team. Were like an Ivy League school, the stuff we get into.

In the Bruins estimation, chess and basketball are linked pieces. It sounds like a specious claim until they start to reason it out.

Pressure situations. Finding ways out of traps, as Stong put it. Examining what an opponent is trying to do and sussing out the countermeasure.

You assume that opponent will do one thing, Jaquez said, and then they do another thing. And then you have to figure everything out all over again.

One mistake, Campbell said, and thats the end. You have to stay alert. You have to see the whole game.

In chess, sometimes it looks like youre sacrificing things when youre really not, Clark said. Youre looking four, five, six steps down the line. If you call a play and it doesnt work, but youre just trying to see if the big man was going to drop or roll or whatever, and then you come back and run the same play with a different counter, youre playing ahead. We do that sometimes here just to get a feel of a team. Were not even necessarily looking at that as a scoring option. Its just to see different things and attack from there.

By most accounts, Campbell and Stong are the resident masters, relatively speaking, but apparently anyone can be a hot hand. Which sounds familiar. Its a day-to-day thing, Stong said. Its like basketball somebodys playing well, theyre going to win.

Gonzaga awaited, but there were a lot of hours between UCLA getting to town and eventually getting to the Zags at T-Mobile Arena. A lot of ways to bide that time. There wasnt a question about the way the Bruins would choose. It was there on their screens to see.

A different college basketball pastime. A different way, as Jaquez put it, to look at the world. You think youre in a bad position, and all of a sudden you see something great, Jaquez said. I think its beautiful.

(Photo of, left to right, Dylan Andrews, Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Tyger Campbell: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)

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How UCLAs favorite hobby became chess - The Athletic