From shuffling around chess pieces with his grandfather to a FIDE Master title, Daniel Barrish has worked his way up the chess ladder and is hoping to finish his PhD in industrial engineering at Stellenbosch University this year. He spoke to SMF News’ Daniélle Schaafsma about the similarities between pursuing a career as a top chess player and pursuing a PhD degree.
Daniel Barrish is a national champion in chess, with two South African Chess Championship wins to his name. PHOTO: Daniélle Schaafsma
“I came across a chessboard, just by chance, when I was three or four. So I played with my grandpa, but not proper chess at all,” says Daniel Barrish, chess player and PhD (Industrial Engineering) student at Stellenbosch University (SU).
From there, his interest in the sport grew.
Daniel started playing chess with his dad at the ages of five and six, and joined a chess club when he reached grade one. This was when he began competing in tournaments.
“I did fairly well in my first few tournaments,” says Daniel, adding that this spurred him on to start taking his chess training more seriously. “Obviously, if you do well, you get motivated to do more.”
Standout chess performance
Daniel fondly recounts the first big moment in his chess career. During an exhibition in Cape Town in 2012, former world champion chess player Garry Kasparov played against 25 people at once. Daniel, only twelve years old at the time, managed to draw against Kasparov, while all of the other participants lost.
Playing and drawing against Kasparov, one of Daniel’s role models, at such a young age left him awestruck, and gave him the confidence boost he needed.
“[Kasparov’s] actually a legend,” says Daniel. “Just playing him was amazing.”
Daniel Barrish began to play chess at a very young age. “A lot of my attitude towards life, in terms of work, in terms of how to approach things, has been shaped through chess,” says Daniel. PHOTO: Daniélle Schaafsma
In 2013, Daniel earned the title of FIDE Master, which is awarded by the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) to chess players who have achieved a certain level in competitive chess events, according to the FIDE website.
This level is measured with different FIDE ratings, on a scale roughly from 1 000 to 2 800, with the best players in the world being ranked at 2 800 (with the title of Grandmaster), and beginners ranking at 1 000, according to Daniel. The FIDE Master title is awarded at around 2 300, he says.
Daniel’s biggest achievement, though, was when he won the South African Chess Championship for the first time in 2019. While he did lose the title in 2022, receiving fourth place, he won it again in 2024.
“Those are by far the two biggest highlights of my career,” says Daniel.
Milestones that Daniel Barrish considers to be the greatest achievements of his chess career. INFOGRAPHIC: Daniélle Schaafsma
Even with all of these achievements, Daniel is still “kind and humble”, says Luka Spies, Daniel’s friend and an MEng (Industrial Engineering) student at SU.
“I really admire his humility, despite being one of [the] best, if not the best, players in the country,” says Kahill Dhevcharran, who is a third-year BSc (Computer Science) student at SU and chairperson of Maties Chess, the SU chess club that Daniel belongs to. “He is always humble and eager to teach his friends.”
Approaching the chessboard
Like any sport, in chess, you have to train and practice to stay in shape, or to keep your mind in shape, says Daniel. Training involves breaking the sport down into smaller pieces and training those skills individually, he says.
“In chess terms, you can break it down to something called openings, starting moves, and end games, which are sort of positions which games tend to sort of lead to,” says Daniel. “Then, various strategic ideas: you have tactics for short combinations, which are like four sequences of quick moves just to get a big advantage.”
To train for these different parts of the game, Daniel reads books, does puzzles, watches strategy videos, and plays chess online.
Daniel Barrish is a PhD (Industrial Engineering) student at Stellenbosch University. His research looks at machine learning, specifically anomaly detection in a time series. PHOTO: Daniélle Schaafsma
“Most of the time, you tend to do more… I guess I’d call it, like, chess fitness,” says Daniel. “Just like trying to become quick and sharp, essentially.”
Kahill describes chess as the only sport that doesn’t rely on physical training, but rather mental fortitude and practice. The best part, he says, is “the thrill of being able to outthink someone”.
During a chess match, Daniel meticulously plans out each of his moves. He uses the same format of thinking as the computer science algorithm called alpha-beta pruning, where you make choices by considering a tree of all the possibilities that you could choose from.
“Basically, you have a tree of options,” says Daniel. “After every move you make, your opponent has three or four options. And then you have three or four options, and so on.”
This then goes deeper and deeper. He calculates the options until there is just “an explosion of possibilities and you can’t obviously see everything”.
Then, he says, “you start pruning the tree”. Daniel uses his knowledge of chess, past experiences, and a mix of calculations to narrow down what the other person’s possible next moves could be.
“Having that whole tree structure of thinking can be applied to anything,” says Daniel. “If this happens, then that’s most likely to happen, and so on.”
The challenge of chess
Daniel is unsure why he took to chess so easily as a child.
“I think I just enjoy competing, to be honest,” says Daniel. “It’s less about chess and more just the challenge of it.”
He says that he cannot sit still for too long and will always try to better himself by taking on new challenges.
Daniel is currently at the tail end of his PhD in industrial engineering at SU, where he is studying machine learning, specifically an anomaly detection in a time series. He equates this academic feat to competitive chess.
After taking a break, chess player Daniel Barrish will be competing in this year’s Chess World Cup in Delhi, India. “From October last year, I haven’t played anything,” says Daniel. “I’ve taken a bit of a break just to make sure I finish [my] PhD in time.” PHOTO: Daniélle Schaafsma
“A lot of my attitude towards life, in terms of work, in terms of how to approach things, has
been shaped through chess,” says Daniel. “A lot of things have been applicable to other parts of my life. The similarities between chess and academic research are extremely similar in many ways. The whole process of preparing for a specific opponent is almost exactly the same as the research process of trying to find a novel problem and then basically going down and trying to solve it, essentially.”
Chess has taught him to think logically and in terms of a chain of events, where there are consequences for everything that you do. Daniel believes that, with this, chess has prepared him to do his PhD.
With this self-paced degree, he believes that a person does need the ability to complete it, but more than that, they need a sense of perseverance.
“The challenging thing about a PhD, though, as opposed to just working, is that, with work, you get that immediate reward. Like, you get your paycheck at the end of every month,” says Daniel. “[With a PhD], there’s no incentive for you to work non-stop.”