Hello to all the amazing people of the Hive! Greetings to one and all! I hope you are well and blessed wherever you are right now.
This is my first post published in this wonderful community and I would love to know more chess enthusiasts here and of course learn and be inspired by your chess stories! I am one of those "chess is my game" mantra😅. I am not as good as many others at chess playing but humbly speaking, I was once a regional chess player way back in high school😂💞.
Anyway, today is not all about how I played chess, it's more interesting than that. I will be sharing with you all my experience holding chess games during our sports days at school recently. It was the first time that we held a sports day after the Covid-19 pandemic. We've been missing it for three school years already so expectedly, the sport-minded teachers and students, like me, were truly excited and thrilled about it.
Being a chess game-lover, I was appointed to become the chess tournament manager and chief arbiter as well😂. We were only two teachers assigned to the chess event so we opted to fill in the officiating officials' need for the event (Aja! multi-tasking mode on!😅). We lack officiating officials because we held a lot of games and all the teachers were distributed to each event to officiate.
I opted to hold the chess event in my classroom. The game was open to all students however we only had 14 players for the boys category and 8 players for the girls category. It seemed like only a few students got to have an interest in chess (this is an amazing game for me, isn't it?). Unfortunately, we only had five chess boards in the school😥 so we decided to let them play by batch. The first batch was board 1 players and the second batch were board 2 players.
We were not able to secure a chess clock to be used in the games however my co-teacher and co-arbiter, Sir Mark Kim, was able to download a chess clock app and the players with a smartphone downloaded it too 🥰. So the games began!
We used the Swiss System of pairing.
At first, the players seemed distracted by using the chess clock, they were not used to it but they eventually got through it after the first round of the game. It was indeed a mind-twirling game. Winners vs winners, losers vs losers. All players had potential and gave their best in every round.
During lunch break, I got a chance to play chess with the players around. I was able to give helpful tips and advice to them based on my experience and on what I witnessed and observed while they were playing in the previous rounds they had in the morning.
One of which was keeping that high morale in playing the game even if you lose the queen. I told them, "it's normal to feel a bit disappointed when you lose the Queen especially at the beginning of the attack because it bears the powerful position among others, however, never lose the fire, keep the game on. Yes, it would be a tough fight ahead against the opponent but do not forget, your King is still there alive and moving... And that last king standing, WINS!
I also told them my opinion on the importance of pawns in the game. Because of what I have observed, they keep on carelessly feeding their pawns to the opponent 😅. I told them that all pieces on the chess board were as powerful and as significant. Pawns may be at the lowest rank but they were the only piece on the board that can be promoted to higher positions and can turn the game upside down.
As I looked at their smiling faces after that short talk with them, I am deeply hoping they would keep my advice to heart and apply it in their games in the future and even in life.
Playing chess is like living our life. You are the king of the game and you must know how to make wise decisions on everything you have around you and play each part on the board. You may have superior potential like the Queen and you may have your lowest capability like the pawns but all of them are part of you. Use them wisely and it will give you victory!
In life, you may lose some important things because of your decisions but what's gone is gone and the game is not yet over. Keep the game on and push forward.
That's all for now my dear friends! Thank you so much for your time reading this post. I truly appreciate it very much. The love and support you keep on spreading in this community is priceless. Keep on and God bless us all!
Best regards!💞🤗