Understanding Participation and Winning

  After a summer off from running youth chess tournaments the school year has started and I am slowly getting my fall schedule of tournaments set up. I didn’t run summer tournaments for a number of reasons. There was the (unfulfilled) possibility that I would have to make trips to California for the project I was working on, the ever increasing cost of renting the outdoor shelter I had been using for my summer tournaments, and the poor attendance of my summer tournaments last year at a church on the south side of Des Moines.

  I was talking with a sponsor about my lack of summer tournaments and they offered me the use of their company board room. The board room was a great playing site with leather chairs and rectangular wood tables that were perfect for chess boards. There was only room for about a dozen players and parents so I had a free invitational tournament that gave eight former champions of my youth tournaments the chance to play a one day tournament in really nice conditions.

  The tournament was a success. The players and their parents all appreciated the great playing conditions and everyone got along before, during, and after the games. As a bonus the company bought Subway sandwiches for all the players and parents. I didn’t offer any prizes for this tournament – not even the participation medals I give to everyone who attends my regular youth tournaments. Before the tournament started one of the players asked about prizes and I told them that the Subway sandwich was their prize which got a good laugh from the players.

  I didn’t give too much thought to not having prizes for the invitational tournament and I didn’t give too much thought to having trophy prizes and participation medals for my fall tournaments until I saw this story in USA Today sports section about how NFL football player James Harrison is returning the participation trophies his 6 and 8 year old sons received for a summer youth activity.

  Harrison wrote "I came home to find out that my boys received two trophies for nothing, participation trophies! While I am very proud of my boys for everything they do and will encourage them till the day I die, these trophies will be given back until they EARN a real trophy. I'm sorry I'm not sorry for believing that everything in life should be earned and I'm not about to raise two boys to be men by making them believe that they are entitled to something just because they tried their best...cause sometimes your best is not enough, and that should drive you to want to do better...not cry and whine until somebody gives you something to shut u up and keep you happy. #harrisonfamilyvalues".

  I especially liked the reference to ‘#harrisonfamilyvalues’ which I hope doesn’t include his 2008 arrest for domestic violence. It probably doesn’t since the charges were reduced to simple assault and criminal mischief after Harrison agreed to undergo domestic abuse counseling. What Harrison does in his spare time is no business of mine – I was just letting my mind wander and wouldn’t have brought it up until I saw the ‘family values’ phrase.

  Two years ago I wrote about the Keller Youth Association Football League’s decision to do away with their participation trophies and the reaction to that decision. The decision didn’t bother me as much as the derision that accompanied the entire concept of participation trophies. This year’s reactions were no exception. USA Today columnist Nancy Armour wrote about Harrison’s decision this week and came down hard against giving out participation awards saying “If we're honest with ourselves, the trophies, ribbons and medals we hand out so willingly are more about us than the children getting them. It's affirmation that our kids are as wonderful as we think they are. It's also a way to fool ourselves into thinking that we're sheltering them, at least temporarily, from the cold, cruel world.” The accompanying rebuttal piece quoted trophy manufacturers asking that they not be blamed for fostering an 'entitlement mentality' along with a HBO Real Sports video showcasing how much money is in the trophy business.

  Conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves to compare participation trophies to 'Political Correctness', saying “There are no starters and there are no bench players because everybody plays. You get trophies for simply showing up. We are never allowed to crown champions because not everybody can be one and to do so humiliates those who lose, and we will not do that… Look! It's a perfect example of what I'm saying! Here you have a series of leftists all over the media agreeing? You would think they would back up the PC version. You would think these are the people that would rake Harrison over the coals for being insensitive and not understanding the plight of children, how they all can't be champions and so forth, and yet everybody falls in line.”

  I have to admit the trophies Harrison’s kids received were pretty nice and far beyond what I would expect of a participation award. Its even called a 'student-athlete award' which sounds like more than a participation award. Since Harrison references that kids shouldn’t ‘cry and whine until somebody gives you something to shut u up and keep you happy’ I wonder if his kids cried and whined until someone gave them these trophies to shut them up. If that’s the case then I’m with Harrison – he should have taken those trophies away. But perhaps these are merely participation trophies which were earned by participating. They don’t say ‘WINNER’ or ‘CHAMPION’ or ‘FIRST PLACE’.

  When I first wrote about this topic I saw no reason to stop giving out participation medals at my tournaments and two years later I still see no reason to stop. I don’t know if Nancy Armour has ever given anyone anything but I have given out almost two thousand participation medals at my youth chess tournaments over the past five years and I am not trying to fool myself or shelter children from the cold cruel world – I’m just giving participants a memento of a tournament. A chess tournament where winning and losing can turn on the smallest of oversights or a tiny lapse of attention is plenty cold and cruel with or without a participation medal or trophy. I admit that Armour is a little right when she says the participation medals I give out are about me. They are about me in the sense that I design a different medal for each tournament and assemble them myself. It is my way of thanking the participants for participating.

  Rush Limbaugh equates participation awards with not being allowed to crown champions because the losers are humiliated. I still crown champions and kids know who the best and worst of them are at any activity before any championship awards are given out, The kids that are going to get upset by losing are not going to feel better by receiving a participation award and the kids that don’t worry about losing aren’t going to get upset because they don’t receive an award. They are just kids playing a game and recognizing their participation is not a life changing event one way or the other.

  I believe that you should get what you earn and if a participation trophy or medal is earned by participating that sounds reasonable to me. The South Snohomish, Washington softball team earned a playoff spot in the softball Little League World Series by winning their first three games in pool play, including a win over the Central Iowa Little League team. The South Snohomish team then lost 8-0 in the final pool play game to North Carolina. The win created a three way tie between North Carolina, South Snohomish, and Iowa with Iowa losing out on one of the two playoff spots by tiebreak.

  The Iowa team filed a protest, saying the South Snohomish team did not use their best players and bunted on every at bat in order to lose the game and deny Iowa a playoff spot because they did not want to meet Iowa in the playoffs. The protest was upheld and a playoff game was ordered between South Snohomish and Iowa. Iowa won the playoff game to get into the Little League World Series in which they were promptly eliminated.

  The same USA Today newspapers and other media pundits that lauded James Harrison’s decision to return his children’s participation trophies with proclamations that you must earn what you get in life and only winners should be rewarded are silent when it comes to the losing Iowa softball team getting another crack at the Little League World Series by complaining and protesting about a game that they weren’t even competing in. Silence also accompanied the South Snohomish softball team being penalized for clinching their spot in the playoffs so early that they could choose to not compete in their last game and influence the competition they had to play.

  I don’t understand South Snohomish purposely losing a game because I think it’s better to maintain momentum just like I don’t understand NFL teams with 13-0 records resting their players instead of trying to go undefeated but I believe they earned the right to conduct their final pool play game however they wanted by virtue of their dominant play in the first three games. I don’t understand why James Harrison would have his children participate in an activity that gives out participation trophies if he doesn’t want his children to get participation trophies. And the thing I really don’t understand is why so many feel so much anger towards participation awards.

Idea Gone Wrong

  When I set up my summer youth chess tournaments this year and went to rent the big outdoor shelter at Pioneer Park I wasn't surprised to see that they were still renting the shelter by the half day which meant that my preferred morning and afternoon youth tournaments were out of the question. I set up the morning tournament and was thinking about repeating last years' time odds blitz tournaments but discarded the idea when I noticed that there were going to be adult tournaments in Des Moines on most of my summer dates. This left the options of leaving after the morning tournament or coming up with a new idea for the unused few hours I had the shelter rented for.

  I was watching the 2014 FIDE Candidates tournament in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia during the period of time I was noodling around with ideas and a couple of games that world number 2 player Levon Aronian played caught my eye. Aronian lost to the tournament winner Viswanathan Anand in the first round and resigned when he was about to lose a piece. I saw how Aronian was going to lose the piece but it seemed he would get a couple of pawns. I set up the position against a chess computer and had a lot of trouble winning the game the first couple of attempts until I thought I got the hang of it. At the end of the tournament, Aronian lost yet another game, this time to Sergey Karjakin. This time it was clear to me why Aronian resigned - Karjakin was going to queen a pawn and even though Aronian's pawn was one move away from making a queen for him, some well-placed checks by Karjakin would be able to stop the pawn dead in its tracks. I played this position against the chess computer and easily won the game.

Left: Aronian-Karjakin with White to move and Black to win.
Right: Anand-Aronian with Black to move and White to win.
Aronian resigned both of these positions in the recent Candidates tournament but for lesser players they are worth playing out.

  Playing over winning positions is excellent for practicing what is commonly known as technique. What is easily winning to a grandmaster is not so apparent to a master and what is winning to a master is not so apparent to a class player. At my youth tournaments I often see some players expressing disdain when beginners play a game out to mate a queen or more behind, forgetting that maybe a year or two before they were the player playing the game out to mate because it wasn't yet apparent to them how their opponent was going to win. A so-called 'winning advantage' for one player may be the beginning of a complicated struggle for another.

  The two positions got me thinking I could spend the spare two hours after the morning tournament in the park by going over them for whoever wanted to show up. I called it a 'minicamp' and made a flyer with the positions and mentioning what I was going to talk about. My idea was I’d explain how to win the positions for a short time and then pair the players off to practice playing the position out from each side. In the week leading up to the tournament I got a lot of positive feedback from parents about the minicamp and finally it was time to see how the idea worked in practice.

  The morning tournament ran well enough. The weather was weird in that it was so cool under the covered shelter to the point of the players wanting sweatshirts and jackets from their parents but so warm when they left the shelter that they ripped off their sweatshirts and jackets. The tournament finished, everyone broke for lunch and at 1 I started going over the simple position where the queen had to stop the pawn.

Under the shelter the players were dressed for winter and ten feet away in the sunshine everybody looked warm...

  I had a lot more beginners than I expected so my explanation of how the queen would stop the opposing pawn from queening by itself took much longer than I intended. That was a small problem compared to the winds that had kicked up between the end of the morning tournament and the start of the mini camp. I've been in Pioneer Park for four summers and while there had been an occasional gust of wind, the winds this day were blowing the boards and pieces off the tables. I had a demonstration board set up on a shelter post which blew off almost as soon as I put it up. Luckily I've lived in Iowa long enough to know to always have a roll of duct tape at my disposal and I taped the board securely to the post and was able to get though my explanation of the position.

  Once we had finished our discussion of the position, I had the players pair off and asked them to try to win and defend the position from either side. A few players did just that but all of the beginning players had no interest in playing the position, they just set up the boards and starting playing chess. It wasn't what I had planned on, but I very rarely see a reason to force people to do things they don’t want to do and I didn't see a reason to do it here either. I went over the position with the more advanced of the participants, and then we went over the second more complicated position by ourselves as the beginners kept on playing. All the efforts at playing were complicated by the occasional massive gusts of wind that would blow all the pieces and the boards all over the shelter. As the ending time of 3pm approached, the players left, state champ Tim Mc Entee (who came by to visit) sorted out the windswept pieces back into complete chess sets and in no time my car was packed up and ready for me to head home.

  It was great that most of the kids had a couple of extra hours to play chess but a week later I have to say that the idea of having a group chess lesson was an idea that just didn't work for the players that come to my tournaments. I don't think it was a bad idea but it was certainly poorly executed. The windy weather didn't help but leaving the mini-camp open to all left me open to exactly what happened – a majority of beginning players that didn't have the patience to sit and listen to a talk on a position for 15 minutes or play test it for a half hour afterward. And having made the decision to have an open activity, having a fallback position would have made some sense. For example, having some puzzle sheets on hand to illustrate some of the key points I was trying to make in the lecture may have kept the beginners engaged and made everything run smoother.

  I suppose it's a case of live and learn but in any event since a local church has offered to host the youth tournaments for the rest of the summer I'll be mothballing the mini-camp idea and getting back to an idea that has worked out spectacularly – the morning and afternoon chess double header tournaments. Trying out new ideas is important in all walks of life but it is equally important to recognize when an idea is not a keeper or just doesn't work. I think the minicamp idea is a good concept but it clearly requires a lot more work than I'm willing to put into it at present to make it a successful idea.

My tournament/minicamp may not have gone as planned, but don't cry for me since as this video clip shows I have been officially labelled a WINNER by the Iowa Lottery Commission and the Bondurant Git 'n' Go!

Positively

  I’ve been busy lately and if you don’t believe me here’s a summary of my last 4 weekends. On Saturday July 21st I ran a youth chess tournament following 2 days of running a chess camp. On July 28th and 29th we drove to New Jersey for a family vacation and spent Saturday August 4th driving back to Iowa. Last Saturday I had another youth chess tournament in the morning and played in a quick chess tournament in the afternoon. Tonight I’m at the State Fair speed chess tournament and this weekend I’m off to Jackson, Minnesota for Sam Smith’s Jackson Open. I played in last Thursday’s Marshalltown Blitz and will probably play in tomorrow’s also. And I’ve been working, writing my blog, walking Daisy and Baxter, and eating Cheetos Puffs whenever I get the chance!

  How do I keep up this pace? I don’t know, but I’ve been able to do it for years. Of course there are times when I get tired of dragging myself to work an hour early on a Thursday so I can get back to Marshalltown to run the chess club by 5pm or answering dozens of emails about an upcoming chess tournament. I’ve been through it enough to know that the weariness is only temporary and that helps me to fight through it, but it also helps when I see the fruits of my labors like I did this past weekend.

 

  On Saturday, I had my last outdoor youth tournament of the summer. I originally planned a morning youth tournament instead of the normal doubleheader because I was playing around with the idea of a handicap tournament where stronger players would have to play without a pawn or a queen against less strong players, depending on how wide the gap in their USCF rating was. Before I got that idea finalized, I ended up giving the afternoon at the shelter to IASCA board member Bill Broich to run a free quick chess tournament as a fund raiser for a chess player/organizer who was moving to Washington DC. His fund raiser was originally scheduled to be the same day as the Jackson Open and I let him use the shelter in the hope of helping get Sam that extra one or two players to Jackson that make the difference between taking a loss or a profit on a tournament.

  My outdoor tournament last August was the most poorly attended of all my 19 monthly tournaments with only 10 youth and 2 parents for a grand total of 12 players. My outdoor attendance has been up this year (29 and 30 in June and July 2012 vs 21 and 23 in 2011) and I wasn’t expecting a large crowd by any means. But I kept getting entries every day and by the end of the week I had 32 entries. I even got 4 entries from people that had never come to my tournaments before which is very unusual for the summer.

  I picked up Chandler and Dalton, the brothers from the Salvation Army club who help me set up in return for a ride and free entry at 7:30 and we were off to Pioneer Park on the south side of Des Moines. We got set up by 9 and slowly but surely the players started to arrive. The new entries came from a referral from the parent of one of Matt’s students and Sam Cole, solving that mystery. I had a few no shows, but I also got a few walk-ups and by the time I got everybody settled in at 9:35, there were 33 players with the only odd number of players in the parents section. I was going to play in the parents section against Kiran (the last arriving parent), but his son was playing next to him and finished so early we decided to call the game off in order to allow him to give an improptu lesson to his son and his son’s opponent.

  Not playing gave me a chance to take pictures of most of the players, observe the games, and talk with the parents. I had at least a dozen parents come up to me to say that their children really enjoyed my tournaments because they are low pressure and that they had fun coming to them. They thanked me for putting on the tournaments, one of the parents insisted on paying me more money than the entry fee, and another got a cool gift for me. I don’t run around solciiting compliments and maybe everyone was being so nice because I didn’t have any future tournaments to announce (St. Francis hasn’t given me the dates for my fall tournaments yet) and were wondering if I was giving up on my efforts to have monthly youth tournaments in the area, but I don’t think so. I think after 20 straight months of tournaments I have a core group of players and parents who get it like I get it, that chess is for fun and making friends and it's building on itself. Every tournament is going to have that player who doesn’t beat anyone, but I think as long as they can walk away with a medal, make some friends to hang out with and see every month, and play some chess games without the pressure of skipping other activities or high entry fees, there’s a much better chance of them playing until something clicks and they see that sudden improvement that most young players do see eventually.

  Speaking of clicking, something has clicked with Dalton. Months ago, Jaleb and I worked with him on how to checkmate his opponent’s king with a king and a queen. We went over it for at least a month, but Dalton would still get a queen ahead and stalemate his opponent. At the July youth tournament, Dalton was a queen ahead twice. He stalemated one opponent and checkmated the other. 3 Thursdays ago he checkmated Eric while a queen ahead, last Thursday he got Zack, and in today’s tournament he got a queen ahead twice and got 2 more checkmates for 4 in a row without a stalemate. He hasn’t done it exactly the way Jaleb and I taught him, but he’s finally figured it out and now I can feel comfortable in teaching him something else. People (not the same ones that tell me I'm hyper-critical and also hold grudges too long) tell me I’m an extremely patient person, but I didn’t know if Dalton was ever going to figure out this checkmate pattern and it gave me a great feeling to see him learn and execute something that we invested a lot of effort in showing him.

  While one of state champ’s Jose Gatica’s students was romping through the unrated section by winning 5 out of 6 games and only giving up a draw to the incredibly talented 5 year old who beat my top 7 and 8 year old St. Francis players in April, 16 players were battling it out in the rated section. 16 is the perfect number of players for a 4 round tournament since there can be at most 1 player who wins all their games and also only one loses all their games, so at least 15 players will have something positive to take from the tournament. The tournament was in the third round and Alex, the player I’m giving lessons to in return for his mom serving as the chess camp nurse was playing Chandler, who has won 2 of the 6 tournaments held this summer. They were among the last 4 players with perfect scores and Alex won after a long struggle which almost didn’t leave time for a fourth round and then he sat down with the black pieces against Jasper from Ames (who takes lessons from my son Matt) to battle for the championship.

  I don’t really teach chess to Alex, rather I try to have him learn chess while I teach him the benefits of not worrying about winning and losing, not to be afraid to make a risky move if he thought it out and thinks it will work, and some basic endings. He is eager to improve and likes to think for himself and that is a great combination of qualities for a young chess player to have. Matt saw Alex’s aptitude immediately at last year’s chess camp and moved him to the advanced group even though he had never played in a tournament game. I think Alex stuggled with nerves in his first few tournaments and had mixed results, but in February he hit a new gear and has gained 100 rating points in each of his last 3 tournaments, including a second place finish in the June afternoon tournament (well before our first lesson). After the normal back and forth of a youth chess game, Alex managed to snare a rook and win the game for his first championship. He was really happy to have won the tournament and I felt great for him, but I had to mention at our Monday lesson that just because he won the tournament he didn’t need to think that now he had to win every tournament. He told me that he thought was lost in every game so he knows he didn’t play perfect. That was just the answer I wanted to hear because if Alex could only learn one thing from me it would be that the most important thing is to work on playing better and not worry about wins and losses.

  I think it was the most positive tornament I ever ran and I’ve run more than a few of them. Everyone had a great time. When the kids weren’t playing in the tournament, they played chess for fun or tag in the parkland surrounding the shelter while the parents were hanging out under the shelter talking to each other and watching their kids play. I felt proud and satisifed that I was able to play a part in providing this chess opportunity.

 

  After the prizes were all given out by the 3 time state chess champ and life master Tim McEntee, it was time to get ready for Bill Broich’s quick chess tournament. There were 13 holdovers from the morning tournament, 10 youth players, myself, and 2 players from the morning parents tournament. We were joined by 6 more adult players and Matt Czizek, a teenager who has started playing in adult tournaments after winning 6 of my youth tournaments this year to make a field of 20 players. I got off to a good start by beating one of the youth players (I mistakenly took the white pieces instead of the black pieces I was assigned to, but Bill said not to worry about it). Then I played second ranked Eddie from Croatia in the second round, who I beat twice in Big Money Blitz last September. I had White and played the Boris. Eddie tried to attack my king, but I found a nice counter to win a piece and force an exchange of queens. Then Eddie switched his attentions to my queenside. I defended poorly and went down in flames. Tim had watched the game and told me I was moving way too fast. It was good to hear that from someone else and I made sure to take my time in the remaining games. I beat youngster AJ (who upset Des Moines chess coach Dan Troxell) in the third round fairly easily. In the final round, I played IASCA president Eric Vigil. I played quite well in winning, but there were a number of times in the game when my hand had a mind of it’s own and tried to make a move without consulting the rest of us. I remembered what Tim had said and each time my hand shot out, I pulled it back, took a deep breath, considered my options, and won what I think is the best game I’ve played in a couple of months.

  It was a great afternoon of chess with the kids from my youth tournaments getting a rare chance to try their luck against some of the area’s best chess players and to get exposed to a more adult tournament atmosphere. And after running a tournament in the morning it was my pleasure to point to Bill whenever anyone asked me a question about the afternoon tournament.

The Next Big Thing

  Chess (along with math and music) is known to produce child prodigies. The best known film about a chess child prodigy is the movie ‘Searching for Bobby Fisher’, a years’ chess journey of 6 year old Josh Waitzen learning chess from the homeless players in New York’s Washington Square Park to being the boy wonder of US youth chess to being overshadowed by another young player who seemingly only lives for chess to Josh’s eventual triumph over his rival at the National Grades Championships. The movie is adapted from the book by Josh’s father Fred (a writer for the New York Times) and takes certain liberties from the book, most notably painting Josh’s father and his chess coach as so fanatical in their desire for Josh to scale the heights of the chess world that they attempt to transform him into an automaton at the cost of his childhood.

  While in the book there is a chapter where Fred Waitzen does search for Bobby Fisher (the American Chess Prodigy who became national champion at the age of 15), to me the title signifies the search for the next great American chess prodigy that will rekindle the popularity and excitement in chess that accompanied Fisher’s ascension to the World Championship in 1972, very much like Morpheus’ excitement at the Neo possibly being ‘The One’ in the Matrix movies. Whenever a young chess talent is spotted, the unspoken question is asked; ‘Could this be the next Bobby Fisher?’ But what most people don’t realize is that Fisher not only had tremendous chess talent, he had an equal or greater talent for hard work.

  In March, I received a phone call from a lady named Kendall asking about the Marshalltown Chess Club that meets weekly at the Salvation Army. She had seen a small write-up about it in the newspaper and wanted to know if her 9 year old son (who liked to play chess and was the best player in his elementary school) would be welcome to attend and what the cost was. I’m always happy to talk about the chess club and I told Kendall how everyone is welcome and while we don’t have any dues, a national membership is required in order to play in our nationally rated weekly quick chess tournament. Kendall was excited that there was a chess club in town for her son and happy that is was just a couple of blocks from their house so they could walk to club and on March 29th Seth made his first appearance at the Marshalltown Chess Club.

  I write to the local schools once a year to remind them about the chess club, but they rarely refer students to me. I’m sure part of the reason is that the schools don’t know me (even though my son’s academic and chess exploits are well known in the local education community), part of the reason is an inherent distrust of the Salvation Army being a religious institution (even though the incredible works of the local Salvation Army is also well known in the community), and part is that the schools have their own after school programs that they’re trying to promote. It’s a shame since study after study after study come to the conclusion that learning to play chess helps many students learn critical thinking abilities that are needed to succeed in school and it is one of the least expensive activities as well.

  Seth was obviously bright, knew how the pieces moved, and already possessed a decent amount of basic chess knowledge. He understood the concept of checkmate and how to execute the king and queen vs. king checkmate. He didn’t understand how the pieces worked together to create attacks but was eager to learn and wanted to jump right in and play in our weekly speed chess tournaments. I didn’t think it was a great idea, but Kendall said it was OK so I got him a USCF membership and he played in the tournament. Seth lost all 3 games and I didn’t know if I would see him again, but he was back the next week ready to play. He had Scott (a 40+ year old mental health counselor) beat with a checkmate in one move but missed it and ended up settling for a draw. I had to play him in the final round. I quickly won a pawn but Seth battened down the hatches and didn’t make another mistake the rest of the game. I ended up winning with my extra pawn, but I was pretty impressed with Seth’s defense in the game.

  Jon (the other adult regular at the club), Jaleb (a 6 year club member who will be attending Iowa State in the fall), and I have taken turns playing Seth at club, trying to give him some pointers as we play. I gave him a book ‘Keene on Chess’ and got him playing online at chess.com. He has been getting better and better and is slowly climbing the club hierarchy. He started by drawing and then beating Dalton (the least experienced player at club) in April. Then in May he beat Zach. Zach is a 5th grader who has beaten all the club regulars except Jaleb and I and gained wins last summer against out of town visitors Matt Kriegel and Roger Gotschal. I would have expected Zack to be beating Jaleb and I occasionally this year but he’s barely been at club since all his sport practices seem to be have been on Thursdays. Later in May Seth beat Chandler for the first time and in June he took out Jon.

  There have been some bumps in the Seth’s road with losses and draws to Dalton, but he never seems to get discouraged and always has a great attitude. In our first 2 tournaments in July, has gotten to the last round tied for first place and playing to be the tournament winner. He didn’t win either game (against Matt Kriegel once and me the other time), but the improvement is obvious to me and it is evident that we will have to step our games if we want to hold off this young challenger.

  This past Saturday, Seth’s dad took him to Des Moines for my monthly youth tournament. I would have taken him but Seth was going to play in the morning and then either go home or stay for the afternoon tournament. The was going to be Seth’s first games outside Marshalltown and at 30 minutes per player his first games at a longer time limit than our Thursday Night 10 minute games. In Seth’s first game, he played Sean, a middle school player from Carlisle that has won one youth tournament and finished in the top 5 in a few others. Seth won easily and then in his second round game he beat Caden, who won the June unrated tournament. In the third round Seth got to play Sam Cole, an eighth grader and 2 time Iowa grade champion. Seth’s penchant for not castling caught up to him and he went done in flames to Sam (the winner of the morning tournament). Then in the last round, Seth played Chandler and beat him to take second place in his first youth tournament.

  I was pleased but not totally unsurprised by Seth’s youth tournament debut. He was composed and confident and didn’t get flustered when he got behind in a game. He was happy with his second place finish and decided to play in the afternoon session after getting lunch. I overheard Seth tell his dad when he got back from lunch that he was tired and that was natural since he had never played in a tournament that lasted more than an hour and he had already played 3 hours and there was a noticable sloppiness in his afternoon games. He was lost in 3 of his games at some point but battled back to win 2 of them and finished the afternoon with 3 wins in 4 games and another second place finish. Seth was back playing in our blitz tournament on Thursday and got to match wits with 2 visitors from Ames, Roger Gotschall and Brad Sheperd. Seth didn’t castle in either game. Roger ( a 70+ retired civil engineer and legendary Ames chess teacher) kept Seth’s king trapped in the center and picked him apart, but noted that Seth missed an opportunity to possibly turn the tables. In his game against Brad (a retired forest ranger), Seth found himself a rook behind but not only got the rook back with some neat tactics, but managed to grind out a win from an equal rook ending.

  Is Seth going to be another Bobby Fischer? Not likely, but I'm not qualified to tell. Is he going to be a state grade champion? I know what they look like and he has the ability and potential, but he’ll have his work cut out for him to catch up with the Iowa 5th graders that have been playing 4 or 5 years instead of 4 or 5 months. Seth is heading to Marshalltown’s intermediate school this year. He was in the talented and gifted (TAG) program in his K-4 school, but the TAG teacher in that particular school has never made finding learning opportunities for gifted kids a priority (She is retired now in a stoke of good luck for many of the talented kids). The intermediate school has a better TAG teacher and it’s possible that Seth will get into an advanced math curriculum and give up chess like my younger son Ben did. Only time will tell, but his potential has me thinking just a little bit about Bobby Fischer.

  Having Seth show up at the club out of nowhere 4 months ago helped to remind me why I run the club years after the initial reason I started it (to find opponents for my children) went by the wayside. I enjoy the company of the chess players who come and go, but every once in a while there is going to be someone who really needs a place to belong for a day or a month or a year. Last Thursday I got another reminder. A teenager I didn’t recognize came into the Salvation Army building. I asked him if I could help him and he said he wanted to play chess and introduced himself as Eric. I didn’t recognize him but I recognized the name. Eric was a semi-regular at the chess club as a 5 year old whenever his grandpa or dad or mom (his parents were divorced) would bring him. Eric had a lot of the same qualities that Seth has shown this summer. He quickly mastered simple checkmates and was beating all the other beginners at club within a few weeks. Then we broke for the summer as we used to do back then and in the fall he never returned. I don’t know if his family forgot about chess or somebody got sick or somebody had to move or if chess became collateral damage in a custody fight, but 8 years later here was Eric! He remembered the club meeting on Thursdays and after 8 years I was still having the club. Eric said he was a regular at the high school chess club this past school year so I got him a USCF membership and put him in the tournament. He wasn’t used to the clock or tournament play and let himself get distracted with his cell phone sending and reading text messages and as a result played poorly and lost all his games. I have no idea if Eric will be back at the chess club soon or if I will have to wait another 8 years to see him again, but I was happy we were both here this past week.

With a little luck and a lot of help

Left: I'm never too tired to pose for a picture with my fellow St. Francis chess coach Chris Hermes. Up front are Chris' nephew Ryan(l) and son Matt(r). Right: Many of professional chess teacher Jose Gatica's students were playing in the tournament, but he was willing to go over the games with anyone.

  The company I work for has a critical interface with a government agency’s computer system. This agency was going to update their systems in December and change the way we interact with them. I knew about this for a couple of months and had been making preparations. 2 weeks ago, the government agency set the changeover date this past Thursday night. I wrote to President Obama letting him know I had chess club that night, was teaching chess class the next morning at St. Francis, had a chess tournament to run on Saturday and could he please impose on the agency to postpone the changeover? I didn’t receive a reply. I would have written to Ron Paul, but he may have tried to abolish the agency and render my job moot. What people don’t realize about burdensome government regulations is that they employ a lot of people like me that help other companies navigate them. It’s the Democratic version of trickle-down economics.

  After stressing over the changeover all week Thursday finally came. I shut down our systems and went home where I would implement our changes when and if I got the signal from the government. The restart was scheduled to take place at 6am Friday and I was hoping it would be late so I could implement our changes after I got back from chess class. I went to chess club where there were an odd number of players for the tournament so I sat out and played 2 games against Joe Meyer after the tournament. I was sloppy and lost 2 games to Joe. Thinking about the changeover would be a convenient excuse, but facts are facts and the fact is Joe is better than me at the moment.

  I got home from the club, got the tournament rated, and saw that the government had finished their changeover in record time so I could get started. I put in my changes, testing each component. It was 12:30 by the time everything was done and I crawled into bed at 1, only to wake up at 4:30 and start all over again. I logged into my work computer, saw I had one process that was crashing, fixed it, walked Daisy and Baxter, and was on the road at 5:45 to teach chess at St. Francis 60 miles away. I haven’t missed a club meeting in the year and a half I’ve been teaching there, but I would have begged off this week except that my co-coach Chris had an appointment and couldn’t make it.

  Getting 3 hours sleep was no problem when I was 20 or 30, and not such a big deal when I was 40, but at 51 it is hard not to get sloppy and irritable on such little sleep. I got my exercise setting up the 30 boards and the crowd of 50 kids talking and playing chess kept me wide awake for the 45 minute club meeting, matching kids for games and teaching the younger kids how to win simple endings. After class, Kurt the maintenance guy helped me put away all the boards and tables and I got to work at 9. There were a couple of problems caused by the government not implementing a process correctly, but they had already fixed it by the time I alerted them. Everything went so well that I went home at 12 to get some sleep before a long tournament day on Saturday. I got home at 1 as planned but nothing else went the way I wanted. Every time I started to nod off, I got a phone call. There were 4 from work, 1 from St. Francis letting me know my next 2 tournament dates, and even a friend of Kathy’s calling to tell me to go outside. I was already awake so I went outside and her friend told me he could see me. He was flying a plane overhead! Pretty cool, but not what I was thinking at the moment. I finally gave up on getting a nap and went to sleep at the normal time.

  I got a reasonable night’s sleep and after a walk with Kathy, Daisy, and Baxter for some beef stick treats, was off to West Des Moines at 6:45 for this month's youth chess tournament with Matt and Chandler the high school kid who helps me set up in return for free entry and a ride. Matt had decided to head down to watch the tournament and meet with Tim McEntee (life master) , Jose Gatica (the candidate master we did the chess camp with last year), and many of the kids who attended the chess camp in July. This month’s tournament was held in a large meeting room instead of the cafeteria so we had to move all the round tables in the room to one side and drag out the long square tables and chairs before we could even get the boards set up. We were running a little behind when Dan Troxell stopped by. Dan had a student playing and was going to play in the parents and friends section. With Dan’s help, we got all caught up and had everything in place when the tournament players started arriving.

  The morning tournament went very smoothly with a nice crowd of 43 players. A lot of players arrived late because they went to the cafeteria on the other side of the facility. Everyone thought the Santa trophies and medals were very cool, if a little odd. I had a lot of time to talk to the players and parents. This is the 3rd month I’ve had the morning-afternoon tournament concept and the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. There must have been something special about this tournament because I had a large number of players stick around for the afternoon session after they had only committed to the morning tournament.

  I had another 37 players for the afternoon session, but then things started to go a little squirrelly. During the lunch break a parent who runs a school chess club told me he had big plans for a week-long summer chess camp and a big tournament in March and wanted me to tell ‘my people’. He wasn’t real happy when I told him that I don’t have any ‘people’ and I wasn’t going to be promoting any other tournaments but the ones I was personally involved with. Then when the afternoon tournament started I had the following 4 incidents happen within 5 minutes: 1) One player made a mistake to lose the game and started crying and SLAPPED HIS FACE!! HARD!! 2) Another player made a mistake to lose his queen and shouted ‘D**N’ very loudly…100 feet from a church 3) A player resigned and fired his pen 20 feet into a wall 4) A player got a nosebleed after horsing around. It looked like a disastrous afternoon, but we got the nosebleed stopped, I got the upset players to calm down, and the tournament returned to a fun time for the kids. I think that the Santa trophies were SO cool, the kids went mental when they lost their first game (making it all but impossible to finish in the top 5 and get the trophy).

  The tournament finished without incident. While Matt was going over games with the players, Tim and Jose were giving impromptu chess lessons to the parents, and I was keeping an eye on the games and answering questions the parents had about tie-breaks, pairings, and a host of other questions about organizing and running tournaments.

  Once the tournament was over, it was time to put away the sets and boards, 8 tables, and 64 chairs and then rearrange the round tables the way they were in the beginning. It would have taken forever, but with Matt, Tim, Jose, and Michael (the parent of one of Matt’s students) helping, everything was put away in 15 minutes and we were done by 4.

  I’d need some time to think about it, but it seemed like one of the most successful tournaments I’d ever held. Except for the bout of 'afternoon madness', everyone had a great time and I even made enough money on this tournament ($82) that I’ll be able to offer trophies to the unrated players for next month’s tournament. Jose had to go, but Tim, Matt, Chandler, and I went to the Perkins for a celebratory dinner. I tried to order the ‘Perkins Famous Chicken Noodle Soup’ but they didn’t have any so I had to settle for a grilled cheese sandwich and ‘Tomato Vegetable Soup’. I couldn’t find any vegetables and while the bowl was very wide, it turned out to only be a spoon full deep. I’m not complaining though. I hadn’t gotten to hang out with Tim in a long time and I was the ONLY person in our group to have any silverware.

  I started getting tired on the drive home, but I was smart enough to get a coffee for the trip. By the time I got home, I’d caught my second wind and had the tournament rated, pictures posted, my report written, and my website updated all by midnight, even though there was one last mini crisis with the government changeover that I had to deal with.

  I did last month’s tournament all by myself and had 63 players between the 2 sections (80 this month), but I had so many balls in the air this time I was happy for all the help I could get. I was lucky to have made it through the changeover at work unscathed but I only call that a little lucky because I was as prepared for it as I possibly could be. But to have had as much help setting up and tearing down the playing site was incredible. It's nice to think you can do everything by yourself, but only a fool wouldn't be grateful for all the help I got yesterday.

Attitude Adjustment

“Living well is the best revenge” – Lenny Blumenthal

The intense concentration of the chess players made a good impression on the visiting teachers and parents who were visiting the basketball tournament next door.

  It was a contentious week of time-wasting emails concerning my monthly youth chess tournament being scheduled in West Des Moines on the same day as the IASCA tournament 140 miles away in Cedar Rapids. The emails finally came to an end Thursday when I asked the 64 thousand dollar question: Would the IASCA prefer that children in the Des Moines metro area not play chess on Saturday at all unless they travelled to Cedar Rapids? The tone of the IASCA this past month would lead me to believe the answer to that question is an emphatic YES, but since a question like this cannot be answered that way, the emails have come to an end for now although I’m sure veiled threats of ‘backlashes’, accusations of ‘competition’, and being singled out for ‘special attention’ in broadcast emails will resurface as soon as another of my monthly tournaments is scheduled on the same date as an IASCA scholastic event. It is ironic to even have this sort of issue with the same people who had no problem running events (and even asked me to proofread their flyers on occasion) on the same dates as IASCA scholastic tournaments held under my stewardship. I don’t feel like I ‘won’ anything since I had a lot of my time wasted, but I limited my losses by not taking the bait and responding in kind to the email sent to all the chess parents trying to portray me and my tournament in a less than flattering light. It could be argued that writing about it in my blog is tantamount to the same thing and I would counter by saying that my efforts to energize youth chess in the Des Moines area has been a central theme of my blog for over a year, these sort of nonsensical incidents have interest to any youth chess organizer and give an inside view of the process to non-chess organizers, and even I can’t write about Cheetos ALL THE TIME!

  The IASCA and I used to get along better (I served on their board for 2 years and was the 2006 member of the year), but these days I don’t get them and they don’t get me. On Monday, I typed the quote from my old friend and co-worker from 20 years ago at the top of this article, sent it to myself as an email, and looked at it as often as possible this week. Dealing with nonsense of this sort takes away a lot of my enjoyment of chess and I needed to remind myself to not let anyone steal my happiness or put me in a sour mood with pointless emails and minutiae all because somebody got upset that 2 or 3 people might not travel 140 miles to Cedar Rapids to play chess because I was having a chess tournament in Des Moines.

Final round action at last Thursday's Marshalltown Blitz.

  I was looking forward to blitz on Thursday night and when Joe Meyer of Waterloo came down to play I was hoping to exact revenge for my loss of 2 weeks ago. We played 4 offhand games before the tournament and I got pasted in each one, only managing to win the last 2 when Joe had cases of temporary blindness going in for the kill. Dan Troxell from Des Moines and Matt Kriegel from Tama also travelled for the tournament to join local players Scott, Jon, Zach, Dalton, and me in the 8 player field. I had just started the tournament when Dave the barefoot chess player raced into the room. That left us with 9 players so I sat out, but the tournament was so much fun to watch and the games so interesting that I agreed to hang around for an extra hour to let the out of town guys get some extra games in before a long drive back. I even managed to get some video of the final round action. The Thursday Night tournament restored my good mood because a we had great mix of adults and kids and everyone got along great.

  I had another great chess experience on Friday morning at the St. Francis Chess club where I teach and coach. After 9 weeks the club has coalesced to the serious players competing in a ladder tournament on one side of the large meeting room and the casual players (about a dozen) giggling, socializing, and maybe playing a little chess on the other side. In addition to the ladder tournament, the players write down the game results each week and for the next meeting, I make up a printout showing the players’ won-loss records. When most of the serious players arrive at the club, the first thing they do is to check their position on the ladder and their won-loss record. The club now requires very little supervision even though we have over 50 players every week, so I have time to start teaching chess. There’s enough time for a classroom session but these kids will be sitting in a class all day and I want the club to be fun, not work, which led me to couch the lessons as a set of challenges. The first 2 challenges are to checkmate with a queen and king against a king and to learn how to play both sides of a king and pawn vs. king ending (either making the pawn a queen or keeping the opponent from doing the same). The players have to demonstrate their skill by playing out the positions against me or the other coaches (Chris and Eduardo). Once a player demonstrates their knowledge, they receive a button to reward their accomplishment. I don’t know how Chris and Eduardo are handing it, but when I accept the challenge, I talk through the position for the other players that are watching while waiting for their turn to challenge me. This way I can have a semi-classroom setting with the students that want to learn and the others can play chess without worrying about a lesson. I had run the king and queen vs. king challenge last year and was expecting the older players to easily checkmate me with the queen this year. I was amazed by how many of the players forgot how to do the checkmate, but I’m sure they’ll get it back after a while. It was great seeing 50 plus kids enjoying chess before school and getting to hang out with the other coaches and share our enthusiasm for the kids learning and enjoying chess put me in an even better mood.

  On Saturday, I was ready for the tournament. Because of a high school math meet, Chandler wasn’t available to help me set up so I took the trip to Des Moines at 6:30 by myself and listened to some music on the trip down. There was a basketball tournament in the adjoining gym and one of the kids whose dad was setting up concessions for the tournament asked me if he could help me set up the chess sets. I was happy for the help and we had the hall all set up by 8:15. I got to talk to his dad and invited them to come to the club on Fridays and offered to allow him to play in the unrated tournament, but they had to leave for basketball practice and I never saw them in the afternoon. A number of the basketball parents and the lady who assigned the rooms for the chess tournaments also came by and were very impressed with the level of concentration of the children playing chess.

  I had about a dozen players in the rated section in the morning and afternoon sessions and only a few of those were staying all day. Most had soccer or cub scouts or other errands taking up half the day and I had a lot of parents come up me to tell me how much they appreciated their children being able to combine chess with their other activities. The unrated section had a lot of repeat customers from last month’s free tournament and I had about 20 players in each session, with a number of the morning players having such a good time they decided to stick around for the afternoon. I had almost a dozen kids from St. Francis playing in the tournaments. Many of them had excellent performances. One player signed up for a USCF membership and played in his first rated tournament on Saturday. He won one of the 3 games, but in his 2 losses went toe to toe with some players stronger than any he had ever played before and had the second-seed on the ropes in the final round. I was really happy to see him play well and even happier to see that his dad got the fact that even though his son didn’t win the game he played fantastic and was proud of the effort instead of being mad at the result. 3 of the other St. Francis players got in the top 5 of the 2 unrated tournaments and their parents got to see some fruits of our work with them on Fridays. With so many beginners, I had to a spend a lot of my time monitoring those games, but I still had plenty of time to hang out with the parents and when the morning unrated tournament ended at 11 instead of 12, I went to my parlor trick of playing the kids with 1 minute on my clock and 5 minutes on theirs. I played for almost an hour and only lost one game when one of the St. Francis parents beat me when I ran out of time. He then told me that in his home country of England, he was a county champion. This new rivalry will be continued another day....

  Almost everything went perfectly, ALMOST. I had a problem with the unrated kids playing so quickly in the morning that the tournament was over in less than 2 hours. I’ll address that by allowing for an unlimited number of rounds as long as they are started an hour before the scheduled end of the tournament. Kind of like a little league baseball game when an inning can’t start before 7:00. I want to make sure the parents get their money’s worth and not travel 10 or 15 miles for 90 minutes of chess. Another problem I had was of my own making. I mistook a late arriving unrated player for a rated player I was expecting and put him in the rated tournament. By the time I realized my error, the game was over and I had to get the unrated player a temporary membership. Normally I am awesome at remembering names and faces, but middle age has started taking some of that ability away. Those few problems were trifling. The kids had a great time, the parents were very vocal in telling me how great they thought the monthly tournaments were for their kids, and I solved the problem I had with the kids scratching the facings of my custom medal inserts off by designing an equally custom plastic insert cover. I even made around $50 dollars which I will put toward getting some chess clocks so I can have the top boards start with clocks instead of rationing my few clocks for the slower moving games.

  I even managed to hold a parents tournament in the afternoon. Last month I had exactly one parent wanting to play and when Christine Denison signed up for yesterday’s parents section, I enlisted Dan Troxell to help me out and head over so Christine would be sure to have some competition. They played a match in the morning, but 4 other parents, including my fellow St. Francis coach Chris, joined in the afternoon for a real tournament. Christine swept the tournament and Chris was thrilled after winning his final round game. He told me it ended up just like the challenges we are giving the kids. He had a King and a Pawn against a King, made his pawn a queen like we are teaching the kids in the one challenge, and then checkmated his opponent with the queen and king like he is teaching the kids in the other challenge. I told him I will present him with his buttons on Friday!

How I Spent My Birthday

  My birthday was yesterday, but it really started on Thursday when I got home from work and was greeted by birthday cards from both sets of my parents-in-law. I went to chess club as usual and lost to Dave the barefoot chess player in a uniquely pathetic performance, but I did get a present in the return to the club of Scott after 6 months spent watching his son’s Thursday cross country meets and starting his own business. Scott is a mental health counselor and his business is called ‘In Perspective’ and it was great to see him back playing chess. I played him in the third round of the tournament and while I did beat him, I can tell he’s been studying and has made a lot of improvement.

  I went home after club, ate dinner, took care of a batch of emails, and checked on a project at work remotely all the while keeping an eye on the 5th and final game of the Yankees-Tigers series. Young gun Ivan Nova gave up 2 home runs in the first inning and that kept the Detroit pitcher Fister from feeling too much pressure and he cruised along till the 4th inning when the Yanks loaded the bases with one out. Fister proceeded to get Martin out on a popup and struck out Gardner to keep the 2-0 lead. Girardi kept switching pitchers like a drunken sailor, but except for CC Sabathia giving up a 5th inning run, the relievers kept the Tigers from scoring any more runs. Cano hit a homer to get the score to 3-1 and then the Yankees loaded the bases in the 7th inning with one out and big hitters Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira up. Rodriguez struck out, but Teixeira got a walk to force in a run, but Swisher struck out and the Yankees were still losing 3-2. They never mounted another challenge after that and lost the game 3 runs to 2 and the series 3 games to 2.

  There is a tendency to blame Rodriguez for striking out 3 times in such a big game, but there’s enough blame to go around. The Yankees outscored the Tigers 28 to 17 in the series, but the Tigers played better in the clutch and won all 3 games in the series that were close. I’m not saying the Yankees choked, but Soriano giving up the game winning home run in Game 3 and the bad at-bats with the bases loaded in Game 5 give that impression. Without his steroids, A-Rod is breaking down and better hitting replacements for Swisher and Martin are needed. Another top-line starting pitcher would be nice. The Yankees did accomplish some good things this year. Granderson has attained near-superstar status, Robertson has shown he may be able to replace the great Rivera, and if Nova doesn’t get hurt he will be a mainstay in the rotation for years to come. BUT, with the Yankees any year without a championship is a year wasted and a 200 million dollar payroll down the drain. As for the Tiger facing last year’s Yankee conquering Texas Rangers, I’ll be positive and say how glad I am that at least one of those teams will lose their next series.

Busy day at the
St. Francis Chess Club!              

  On Friday, I went to St. Francis in West Des Moines for my 5th chess class of the year. We have over 50 kids signed up and a high of 58 attending last week. The beginners are starting to play more or less complete games and 25 players are competing in a ladder tournament each week. I’ve got a couple of great parent helpers which allows me to go to each group and answer questions and give some quick instruction. I’ve had a few dropouts but many of the parents have written to me to tell me how their kids look forward to chess club on Fridays. This makes me feel great because my main goal is to instill a love of the game and show the kids how to have fun whether they win or lose.

Mmm..almond bars!

  After the club was over I hustled across town to work, where there was an email saying it was my birthday tomorrow and Sarah had baked some almond bars for everyone to eat. It is a tradition at this job to have someone bring in treats to celebrate every birthday. The almond bars were great and a lot of people offered their condolences about the Yankees, although there seem to be a lot Cub fans who didn’t seem very sincere. I understand that since you would have to be 103 years old to say you were alive when the Cubs were world champions. I worked, went home, walked the dogs with Kathy, ate some of the special corned beef she cooked for me for my birthday, took care of another batch of emails, watched a little TV, and got a good night sleep to get ready for a busy birthday day.

  Yesterday morning at 6:30, I headed to West Des Moines for my monthly youth chess tournament after walking Daisy and Baxter to the Jiffy for a beef stick treat with Kathy. Normally, I wouldn’t have had a tournament on my birthday, but October 8th had been designated as National Chess Day. Last year at this time, I held a free IASCA qualifying tournament in Marshalltown and got some nice publicity on the USCF website when I submitted my story about the tournament. I inquired with the IASCA clearinghouse about having the same tournament again this year without competition. One of the board members said he had already scheduled an event in Cedar Rapids on that weekend. Tournaments in Marshalltown don’t work very well against competing tournaments, so I stopped planning the Marshalltown tournament and instead scheduled my monthly tournament at St. Francis for National Chess Day.

  I got the tournament date secured and then my friend David Coppedge from Marietta, GA had me do some computer work for him and paid me enough to allow me to offer a free tournament again like last year. I kept the same format I had last month; morning and afternoon tournaments for USCF members and non USCF members, very few trophies but medals for everyone. I started advertising a month ago, sent my emails out 2 weeks ago and was looking at 15 entries last Sunday. I was not too concerned since this happens every month. Most tournaments make the parents commit at least a few days in advance to receive a pre-registration discount, but I say anyone who sends me an email at least the day before is pre-registered. Making it so easy on the parents to sign up can make it hard on me if I choose to worry about how many players I have, but I’ve learned to stop worrying about how many people will come to my tournaments as long as I’ve done everything I can do to. As the week went on, I got a lot of signups from the tournament regulars, kids from the schools where Jose Gatica teaches, some of the Ames chess clubs, and some players from Lee Cole’s club. Add in 20 or so of the kids I’m working with at St. Francis and by Friday night I had over 70 signups.

  I had some no shows, but there were 67 players at the chess board at some point during the day. I brought high school student Chandler from Marshalltown to help set up and one of the players from Stillwell Junior High came an hour early to help so we had 40 boards up and ready by 9. It was a good thing I had extra help, because I had made a mess of the trophies. I ordered them months ago and looked at them, but as I put them out today I saw that the labels all said WDM National Chess Day – October 8th, 1960. What a maroon! I entered my birthday instead of the actual date when I ordered the trophies. I 'Sharpied' out the 1960, printed 2011 on some clear labels, and found I had no scissors and my knife wasn’t sharp enough to cut the labels. Bondurant chess coach Craig Kinrade went out and got me a pair of scissors and a Mountain Dew and even put the new year on the trophies for me. The trophy winners got a big kick out of the stupid date on the trophies once they heard the story, so it wasn’t as big a deal as I originally thought.

  The tournament was great. I was determined to have a good time and nothing was going to stop me from having one. A lot of kids were beginners playing in their first tournament. They needed a lot of help going over the rules, but there weren’t a lot of arguments either. I had at least 20 parents tell me that they were happy the tournament was only in the morning because the kids had another activity in the afternoon that would have prevented them from coming to an all day event. I got to spend some time with the parents but pretty much had to keep an eye on the beginner’s games.

I can't remember seeing
a happier face than Will's
after pulling off this
cool-looking checkmate.

  There were a lot more issues in the afternoon session. One player in particular kept accusing his opponent of cheating by moving the pieces around. Luckily, that player that had been accused was writing the moves down and I could use that to verify the position on the board was accurate. I talked to the upset player and the mother and suggested it would be a good idea if he wrote his moves down also to be able to prove any accusations. He won his last 2 games, but to my surprise did write down the moves, which is more than I was able to get the kids who had come to the summer chess camp to do during the tournament. My other big problem was with the medals. Having the inserts printed for me is very expensive and I have to order a minimum of 100 at a time, so to keep costs down I’ve been buying blank medals in bulk and printing and applying the insert label stickers myself. A couple of the kids discovered that they could just scrape the ink off the label and started destroying their medals and then some other started scratching their medals just to see if they could, stopping when they had put an ugly scrape through their medal. Kids! By the end of the afternoon tournament, a lot of the kids wanted new medals. I traded out the ones I could and put new inserts in some others, but I need to come up with a way to scratch proof the inserts.

  I hope I’ll see a lot of the new players continue tournament chess, but a lot of them expected to win all their games because they can beat their parents or uncle. These players had a good time and hopefully made some new friends, but now that they saw that there are plenty of other kids who are their equal or better at chess many of them will stay away from tournaments. I can’t control that, but I’m very happy that I was able to put on a free tournament and provide a few hours of chess for anyone who cared to play. The tournament wasn’t perfect (they rarely are), but it was a great tournament that got a lot of kids exposed to chess.

  After the tournament was over, my friend from work Shashi came to the site with a friend of his and his friend’s 2 daughters. Shashi’s birthday was also yesterday and he was spending it with his friends’ family since he has no family in the area. We spent an hour or so playing chess with the girls (they knew most of the rules) and a couple of the players from Ames who wandered back in after playing in the nearby playground. I left a little before 5, was walking the beagles by 6:15, and had the tournament rated, pictures uploaded, and all my articles written by 9pm. I got to unwrap my presents, but never found the time to eat my birthday cake.

The birthday haul: Cards, a Batman T-shirt, the new Joel Osteen book, the coveted Pen-Cam for better blogging, and a sampler of the BEST candy ever, ZOTZ!

  I got up this morning at 4:30, Kathy and I walked the dogs to the Jiffy for a beef stick treat at 5, and we finally ate some of my birthday cake at 8 this morning. My Sister-in-law Megan made me a facebook pictorial of her visit to the Waffle House in honor of my birthday and I had a great time looking at that and remembering the taste of scattered smothered and covered Waffle House hash browns.

  Except for our traditional celebratory meal where I get to pick where we go to, my 51st birthday is over. The first 51 years have been OK and I had a great start on the next 51 with my most attended tournament since I started my Des Moines metro scholastic program and a great birthday to boot. I’ve got a bagful of new ideas I’m itching to try out and if the coveted pocket pen camera I got for my birthday is half as good as it’s cracked up to be, I’ll have the potential for great blog material whenever I step outside.

Second best

Nothing second best about these kids. They are top shelf all the way.

  I held an outdoor chess tournament in Des Moines yesterday at the same covered shelter I had rented in Pioneer Park for last months tournament. Unlike last month, all the picnic tables were in place and rendered unavailable to any roving bands of trailer park refugees. It rained till eleven o’clock even though the taped weather forecast on WHO kept saying the rain would be ending early in the morning. The weather reporter also said the temperature would hit 96 degrees with something called the heat index making it feel like 110.

  I had prepared by bringing plenty of fruit to eat along with Powerade and juice. I even bought some ice and duct tape at the convenience store. I wasn’t going to eat the duct tape, but I had brought some tarps to protect the shelter from sideways rain and the duct tape was for taping the tarps to the shelter posts.

A battle for first place that would have the Roman gladiators jealous.

  I didn’t think it was all that hot, but it’s good to be prepared. I wasn’t ready for the mosquitoes that were hanging around the chess players, but enough of the parents had bug spray and were willing to share so it was a non-issue. As soon as first round started, the power went out to the one outlet that was attached to the shelter. My computer only had a 2 hour battery, so I turned it off and started to fill out the manual pairing cards that were used in the pre-computer days. I haven’t had to use the cards since 2003, but I still had them at the ready. I had all the cards filled out and was ready to pair the second round by hand when I heard the happy sound of my printer coming to life. I turned my computer back on and was back to the modern age for the rest of the day. I would have been able to struggle along with the pairing cards, but it takes a lot of time and would have been the second best way for me to run a tournament. Next month, I'll have a one of those devices that give you an electric outlet from your car's lighter.

  The 21 kids and parents that played had a good time and then it was time for the afternoon cash tournament. I had 7 players including myself. I managed to win the first 2 games and was paired against 2004 state champion Dan Vasto in the third round. Unlike our previous 3 meetings where I had Black and was quickly a pawn down (managing to win one of these games), in this game I was Black and was a pawn up in the middle game. My king was trapped in the center for the pawn and I ended up giving the pawn back. I got down to 10 seconds left in and butchered a difficult ending to lose to Dan yet again. I wasn’t displeased with the game since I felt like I’d given Dan my best shot, but having come out second best in our encounter I decided to take the last round off and pack up while the other 6 players finished. If I had been playing in the last round, I could have used the duct tape for my ears when a band replete with a tuba player started practicing in the next shelter over. Amplified music is prohibited in the park, but there is no regulation against an old-school tuba and drum set.

A tuba player at a chess tournament doesn't seem like the second best option to silence...
until his drummer buddy decided to join in.

  In other second best news, I received an email from the Chess Journalists of America with a link to the list of entries for the 2011 awards. While my entries for the best feature article must contend with 10 other entries, it appears there are only 2 entries for the best chess blog, ChessVine.com and this blog. I reviewed the competition and see that there have been only 13 posts on their site all year (and most of those posts are merely links to other chess sites - no original content) and just 3 of those since May 1st (It was much more active last year). It’s inconceivable to me that I could finish second to this particular blog, but I’ve seen stranger things happen. Once I tried out for a play in a community theatre and there was no one else auditioning for the lead role. I would always audition for the lead role and be offered the comic relief part (if I was offered any part at all), but it looked like I’d have a chance to have a leading part this time. Another audition was hastily arranged and there was no lead for me. I also remember an Abbott and Costello routine where the boys go to the racetrack. Lou bets on the races and loses every race until there is a 2-horse race between Lollipop and Jellybean. Lou bets on both horses and still manages to lose his money but the next race has only one horse (Peanut Butter). Lou bets all his money on Peanut Butter, but Lollipop finishes from the last race and Lou’s horse loses yet again (You can listen to it here at the 24 minute mark).

If I'm not at least second best in this contest,
I'll be the Lou Costello of chess journalism.