Watch out for the screen name Fear when you play Tantrix online. The player behind it is 12-year-old Chris Hill of Gisborne Boys’ High School who just happens to be a Tantrix master.

Estimating himself to be ranked around 40th worldwide, Chris was second in the New Zealand Open Championships and second in the Junior World Under-16 Championships this year. “It is quite unusual for someone so young to be so good,” said Shaun Cooper of the Massey University mathematics department, and former Gisborne man.

Tantrix is described as “a strategy game with an element of chance”, played with 56 hexagon tiles. On the tiles are coloured lines and curves which join together and the player’s goal is to make the longest line of their colour. The bigger the loop the more points you get,” Chris said.

“You have to be really cunning as you force people to put their colours down,” said his mother Nicola. “That is why it is a game used in schools, because of the strategies,” she said.

Chris’s secret is practice. He has had enough, registering over 1,000 games on www.tantrix.com. Of these he won 685, tied 41 and lost 291. He practices four days a week, one hour at a time. Chris also plays tennis and chess on the side.

Tantrix can be played on the internet. Worldwide tournaments are often run against countries like Netherlands, Hungary, Norway, Sweden, Britain, Australia, Indonesia, Germany, Finland, New Zealand, America, and Canada.

There are two New Zealand teams – A and B – made up mostly of people ages 18 to 50. Chris is in the B team and Mr. Cooper is in A. The B team has made it to the quarterfinals as one of the top eight teams in the world.

The Tantrix talent has become a family thing now for Chris, whose 10-year-old sister Caroline first introduced him to it. Their mother caught on to the craze and now he beats her in matches regularly.

No wonder. Online, Chris is now counted as a master. This makes his screen name Fear show up in a different colour that tells people he is at the highest level and, if you are just learning to play, you’ll probably lose to him.