In Search of Consistency

 
2 x 52 = 104
...after today!

  This will be my last blog of 2011. I’ve written 2 posts a week every week this year except on Okoboji weekend in April when I wrote my Sunday post on Friday in order to be able to enjoy a great weekend directing the Okoboji Open and hanging out with my friends Jodene Kruse, John Flores, Sam Smith, Riaz Khan, and the rest of the crowd. Just like holding a youth tournament every month in Des Moines is something I am proud of, having kept to a blogging schedule of two posts a week for an entire year is also something I’m looking back on with pride since consistency is a virtue I prize very highly. If you click the little ‘next blog’ button on top of this page a dozen times, you will probably see 8 blogs without a post this month and 4 or those without a post in the last 6 months. If you’ve given your best effort and decided the results aren’t worth the work I see nothing wrong with walking away, but shouldn’t these people at least write a good bye post?

  One of my rewards for regularly writing my blog for an entire year is being able to go back and read an entire years’ worth of writing in a couple of hours like I did this past weekend. I think I got better at writing as the year progressed, but I'm not a good judge. I got a lot of blogging material from my monthly Des Moines family chess tournaments, but my visits to Zanzibar’s Coffee Adventures and my quest to win an award from the Chess Journalists of America also provided many blogging miles. I found time to write a little about sports and politics, but Daisy, Baxter, and Cheetos dominated my non-chess postings.

  Another reward a long running blog provides is to use the Google Analytics tool to see which of my 103 posts this year have proven the most popular. Even though my blog is primarily about chess, the most looked at posts this year were my March review of the Joe Namath biography, the January posting about Daisy and Baxter titled ‘Beagle Puppy Update’, my first visit to Zanzibar’s Coffee Adventure titled ‘Coffeehouse Chess’, and my May story about my in-laws dentures (‘A Tooth for A Tooth’). These rankings are skewed towards older posts since they have been available for ‘googling’ for many months, but it is undeniable that Joe Namath is still a football rock star and Beagles are one of the most popular pets in the world. I’m not surprised that my Cheetos posts aren’t looked at more, after all why would anyone read about Cheetos when they could be eating them instead!?!

  On the inconsistent side, for the third straight year I’m ending the year at a different job than I started the year in. I think I’ve finally found a place to settle in for a long stretch, but I thought the same about the last 3 jobs. After having my job sold out from under me 5 years ago, I’m happy to have gotten my skills upgraded to the point that I don’t get calls from recruiters looking for fossils to work on legacy systems. Now I get calls from recruiters that are looking for people with modern skills. Taking a new job was a huge gamble on my being able to hold my own in a super-fast paced environment and so far it’s paid off. The job market looks good for programmers in the coming year, but all it takes is one clown crossing out names with a red pen and no job is safe so I'm still looking to keep my skills as current as I can.

  My new skills have come in handy in developing my chess website www.centraliowachess.com. Because I have a better understanding how to build these things from the ground up, I was able to put it together in around a week and now I’ve started to add the types of features that dovetail with my series of blitz and family tournaments. Players in my Thursday Night Blitz and Youth Chess tournaments can see seasonal and all-time won-loss records and view their playing history. The USCF website does the same thing (only better), but my site also shows statistics for unrated and parents tournaments. I have a good amount of work remaining for a first class web site, but since I’m committed for the long haul I can afford to be patient and let the content build up as I continue writing about my chess tournaments. In a year or two my reward will be a website that is a central part of my work and chess resume and a selling point for independent website development.

 

 

  When the year started, we had just gotten Daisy and Baxter, and seeing them grow up has been a year-long treat. I took a few pictures and posted them on Facebook when they were little pups, but then when I missed a week, Kathy’s family wanted to see more pictures of Daisy and Baxter, so each week I assemble our pictures and post them on Facebook. It takes about 20 minutes a week (not counting the time spent taking the pictures) but to look at an entire year of pictures on Facebook makes it seem like time well spent indeed (Here is a bonus link to the Christmas album). I can look at the cover picture on all the beagle albums on one screen and it’s almost like watching them grow up in the blink of an eye. I’m very jealous of young parents who can take pictures of their children every day, post them on Facebook or some other social media site, and then be able to look back in a year or 2 and watch the growth of their kids. Matt graduated from high school and Ben went through confirmation this year, but we just have a few pictures a year of them. I don’t know if I’ll still be taking pictures of the beagles as they start to turn gray and age and decline, but I tend to think I will. I still look at pictures of Queenie and Tuffy. Kathy and others will look at the pictures and say how old they look, but I never see them as old, I just see all the enjoyment I got out of my friendship with them.

  I don't take myself too seriously, but I take being consistent very seriously. I’ll leave the why to psychologists. I’ve always tried to be consistent and always valued consistency in others. I enjoy working with honest people and people who I can depend on to work hard and do the right thing, but that isn’t always an option. And when that option isn’t available and I can’t go it alone, I’ll take the people who are always looking out for themselves at the expense of everyone else and the people who you can tell are lying because their lips are moving every time over the people who make you guess whether they’re telling the truth or if today will bring a pat on the back or a kick in the rear. At least with the former I always know what to expect and will never be disappointed.

Playing My Drum

  I spent the week before Christmas transfixed by the song ‘The Little Drummer Boy’. My Rhapsody subscription ($15 a month for access to their entire catalog) combined with my amazing iPod allowed me to create a playlist of 30+ artist’s renditions which I found myself listening to over and over. I found the song inspirational all week long and especially liked the duet by Bing Crosby & David Bowie, with the versions by Ringo Starr, Smokey Robinson, and Stevie Wonder close behind. Like the drummer boy (and the wise men for that matter), none of our gifts are fit for the King but what little we have to offer is met with a smile as long as we offer our best. It is a tremendous thought for any time of the year and it’s important to recognize all the gifts that come our way, both big and small.

Top Left:New new guy Tony and I with our Christmas Cheetos. The rest of the pictures are of the Court Avenue Restaurant and Brewing Co. including the Salmon Sandwich lunch special.

  I got my first present on Tuesday at work when new guy Tony brought me a big bag of Cheetos Puffs. Just having Tony around is a present to me in and of itself. Before he came on board, I was not only the new guy – I was the old guy, too. I remember when I was always the youngest person at work and now I’m older than my boss, my bosses’ boss and twice the age of some of my co-workers. There are some older network and marketing guys, but I’m the oldest programmer and I think it’s by a big margin. I pull my weight and no one calls me ‘pops’ or anything, but since Tony is older than me, he has relieved me of being the new guy and the old guy. Now I’m just the bald guy, but as the prophet Meat Loaf said “Don’t be sad, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad”.

  My day got even better when I was taken out to lunch by the project manager of the company I work for. Last week the government agency we interact with had a systems changeover and the customer was very pleased that we were able to match their changes with a minimal amount of problems. Because the customer contracts my time through my company, they aren’t allowed to give me a bonus or presents, but a ‘working lunch’ was arranged. We walked to the ‘Court Avenue Restaurant and Brewing Company’ via the Skywalk. The restaurant is a business lunch spot and night time hangout in a bar, band, and restaurant district just off downtown Des Moines. I had the lunch special which was a grilled salmon sandwich with potato salad and the project manager had a giant burrito. The sandwich was good, the potato salad was awesome, and the price was excellent (for me, that is)! It was nice to be taken out to lunch and after the tense weeks leading up to the government changeover, and I enjoyed celebrating the success of a mostly problem free upgrade.

Jaleb Jay vs. Jon McCord

Roger & Cypher
in Cyclone gear.

  On Thursday at chess club, I got more presents with the return of Jaleb Jay and a visit from Roger Gotschall, the legendary Ames chess coach and tournament director and his traveling companion, Cypher the Boston Terrier. Jaleb hadn’t been to the club since August due to school and other scheduling issues, but will be around for a couple of weeks with school off for winter break and Roger’s Cyclone Chess Club (which also meets on Thursday) is also off for a few weeks since they are a college chess club stationed on the Iowa State University campus. Except for Jaleb, I had no other school-age kids at club. Maybe they thought there’d be no club, but since Christmas wasn’t on a Thursday, it was business as usual at the Marshalltown Chess Club!

  We had an odd number of players so I sat out of the tournament. Jaleb shook off 4 months of rust to win the tournament, but I managed to beat him 3 out of 3 in 5 minute games. I won one convincingly, and was even and lost in the other 2 when Jaleb ran out of time. When coming back after a long layoff, most players tend not to trust their calculation of tactics and use precious seconds double checking themselves. It used to be an upset when Jaleb beat me, but now I feel lucky when I win so I was thrilled to get 3 out of 3 any way I can.

Roger and Me,
Cypher & Italian Sausage!

  I didn’t get to play Roger, but we got to talk about chess, dogs, and life for around an hour. Roger and I have had our share of differences about youth chess and the direction of Iowa Chess over the years, but we get each other and have a lot in common. We're both stong-willed and indefatigable! We both have weekly chess clubs on Thursdays and while I get myself out of the house early every Friday to go to Des Moines and teach chess at St. Francis, Roger has taught chess at a minimum of 3 schools in the Ames area for years. He has had some health problems this year and is in his 70s, yet he still gets to these schools every week to teach chess. His is an enduring legacy that will last generations, but Roger isn't interested in collecting accolades. When I asked him to see if he could find a way in his capacity as Iowa's representative to the USCF to get a discounted one day youth membership established so high schools could compete in the state team championships without having to buy expensive annual memberships for only one tournament, Roger got it passed. The USCF higher-ups took the credit for getting this innovative idea, but Roger was more interested in being of service to Iowa chess players than who got credit. We are also big baseball fans, with Roger getting the leg up on me this year with his favorite Cardinals thrill-a-minute World Series victory. Now that Roger has Cypher, we also share a love of dogs. Cypher had a Cyclone colored coat with his name embroidered in it. Daisy and Baxter are so yappy I could never have them at a chess tournament, but Cypher's quieter than most chess players. It was a pleasure to have Roger and Cypher come to visit and I was surprised and pleased when they gave me a beagle calendar for Christmas. We all received another present at chess club. The Salvation Army had just had their holiday food box distribution (300+ families fed) and had boxes and boxes of close dated frozen Italian sausages left over so we each received a frozen pack of sausage.

  Saturday was my turn for some giving. The past 2 years, Matt had conducted a simultaneous chess exhibition where he would play 10 to 15 players at once. The idea was that all the participants would make a donation to the Salvation Army in order to play and that anyone who beat him would win a tournament chess set. No one ever beat Matt and except for the set I gave to Daniel Carson in 2009 for lasting the longest against Matt, I still have all the ones I bought 2 years ago. This year, when Major John asked about the chess exhibition, I didn’t have time to coordinate a simul with Matt (he’s is college and has his own plans for the holidays), so I volunteered to play speed chess against all comers on Christmas Eve. The last 2 years, we had very little participation in Matt’s simuls outside the chess club and I wanted to try to get new people in town to play some chess, so I decided to play all comers with 1 minute on my clock and 10 minutes for the challengers and give away chess sets to anyone who I couldn’t beat before I ran out of time. I cleared it with the mall, got a press release printed in the newspaper, and was off.

Johnny summed
it up in 2 words!

  I’m OK at speed chess, but almost any tournament player could beat me at these time odds. I didn’t care since I had all the chess sets I bought for Matt’s simuls sitting in a box for over 2 years and they weren't doing anyone any good in a closet. I told the mall management that I wanted to do the exhibition by the entrance to the JC Penney store where the bell ringers always are with a 4x8 table or 2 off to the side where Matt held his simul. The mall manager said it was OK with him, but he didn’t want a big table by the entrance and didn’t have anything smaller than a 4x8 table. I told him I’d bring a card table and I arrived with it at 10:30 yesterday along with my box of chess sets, a couple of chess clocks, and a Salvation Army kettle and bell.

The JC Penney manager before
banishing us to the corner.

  I was all set up by 10:50 and had the exhibition planned from 11 to 3. The first player was a kid named Rico. He didn’t want to play speed chess, so we played a couple of games until his dad told him he had to leave. Then a high schooler named Johnny came to play. He also didn’t want to try the speed chess challenge so we played some offhand games. I beat Johnny twice and he paid me my first compliment of the day when he said “You Suck”. Since he was smiling when he said it, I assume he meant it in a good way. We started a new game, but then Chandler and Dalton from the chess club came with their parents and 3 foster kids their folks are taking care of. Dalton paid his entry fee and we started playing time odds chess. Dalton is the newest tournament player at club and while he has won a few games, he was no match for me in the 3 speed games we played and never even made me use more than 20 seconds. During the second game, 2 managers from JC Penney (a man and a woman) came out and told me that I was 'impeding' their customer’s access to the store and could I move to one side or the other of the entrance. The entrance is 40 feet wide and I was 5 feet from one side so I moved the 5 feet over. Then after our third game, the lady manager came over and demanded I move to the other side of the entrance. While she was demanding, she pointed out the JC Penney was being quite gracious in allowing bell ringers to even be anywhere near their store entrance since no one else in the mall wanted the bell ringers anywhere near them. I moved the chess table and the red kettle to the other side of the entrance and proceeded to play Chandler.

Chandler's foster brothers
were donation magnets!

   Chandler played a smart game, keeping his king protected and trading pieces. I only had 8 seconds left when I hung a rook in an even position and had given away my first chess set of the day, when Keith from the Salvation Army came over and told me the woman manager had called him to let him know that the bell ringers were ‘playing chess’. I imagine no one told her about the exhibition. We moved the chess table and the kettle far away from the entrance on a landing behind a ‘hurricane machine’. Since its Christmas I’m not going to say anything bad about the manager, but if I ever have a business where I need to drive away customers, I know where I'm going first. Chandler didn’t want to play after winning the first game, so I played Dalton for another hour until I finally ran out of time and gave away my second chess set. Except for one guy that watched for a bit, no one was interested in playing speed chess, so I did some bell ringing along with Dalton and 2 of his foster brothers until about 2:15. While bell-ringing, I learned the valuable lesson that little kids ringing the bell really bring in the money as an incredible number of people would see the cute 3 or 4 year old foster brothers ringing the bell and give the kids money to drop in the kettle, including one lady who emptied handfuls of change out of her purse to give the kids to put in the kettle.

  While the youngsters were ringing the bell, the fellow who was watching me play Dalton came over and decided to play a game. His name was Gary and he really enjoyed playing even after I checkmated him using only 20 seconds. I gave him a flyer to the chess club and hope I’ll see him again. When Dalton and his family left, Major John showed up and we talked for a bit. I told him about the problems with the JC Penney manager and he said not to worry about it so I didn’t. Then a lady named Marsha and her husband Denny came over and said Marsha wanted to play a game. We started our game when Kathy came over to see how the exhibition was going. Marsha was a pretty good player and I just managed to win with 10 seconds left (Marsha used about 8 minutes). Marsha and Denny live 20 miles away in Gilman and I hope to see them again at the club someday since I think she could play even with Scott, Jon and the other regulars. I was about ready to pack up when 4 college kids came by, looked at the sign detailing the exhibition, talked amongst themselves, and started walking away when I pointed out they only had to last a minute with me over a chess board and it wasn’t like Spiderman trying to last a round with the professional wrestler. That convinced one of the kids to try his luck.

After a slow start, the speed chess exhibition picked up with 5 players in the last hour.

  It turned out the kid who was playing was Corey McMillan, a high school classmate of Matt’s. I told him I remembered how they were on the same soccer team as youngsters and that I remember he was a real good soccer player. Corey said he was playing soccer at Alleghany College in Pennsylvania and was home for the holidays. I beat Corey with 26 seconds to spare and told his friends that I’d give any of them a chess set if they could last longer and if they couldn’t Corey would get the set. 2 of Corey’s friends, Ian and Jason played, but neither lasted more than 34 seconds so one of my chess sets will be heading to Alleghany College with Corey!

  It was a slow start to the exhibition but a fantastic end with 4 games in the last half hour. I hadn’t given any money to any bell ringers once I knew I would be doing the exhibition, and put it in my kettle before I packed up and went home with Kathy to walk the dogs for another beef stick. I always like to do what I can for the Salvation Army. They host our chess club (and dozens of other groups), they get food for the hungry, and anyone who is in need of clothes or furniture can get a voucher from them to get what they need at their thrift store. In addition to all that, they have had a singularly transformative impact on my life. If I hadn’t been challenged to start a chess club by Major Joan in 2002 when I asked if the Salvation Army had one, I’d never have run a chess tournament, met many of the people that have enriched me so much, taught chess at St. Francis, or started my blog. And that’s just off the top of my head. When I get the chance to do something for the Salvation Army, I feel like the drummer boy whose gifts aren’t worthy of the recipient, but are accepted with a smile anyway because I’m giving my best effort.

Here's to Perfection

  The Green Bay Packers lost their chance for an undefeated season when they lost 29-14 in Kansas City by the Chiefs on Sunday. The Chiefs chances of pulling off this upset were boosted considerably when Head Coach Todd Haley was fired less than a year after taking the team to the playoffs. With their coach fired, the only way for the players to prove that the reason for the teams’ disappointing 5-8 record was the coach and not the players was to give their very best effort. That, the calming stewardship of interim coach Romeo Crennel, and the return of recently acquired quarterback Kyle Orton from his broken finger proved to be just enough to stifle the Packers great QB Aaron Rodgers and take the victory.

   The Chief fans are elated by the victory and rightly so, but I wonder why a coach in only his third year is fired when he won the division in his second year? The Chiefs lost Pro Bowl running back Jamaal Charles, quarterback Matt Cassell, and budding superstar tight end Tony Moeaki to injury earlier this season. General Manager Scott Pioli managed to pick up a serviceable quarterback (Orton), who promptly broke his thumb in his first game, leaving the quarterback chores in the shaky hands of one Tyler Palko. I’m assuming Haley had some sort of problems getting along with the players or Pioli, but since Pioli was the one who hired Haley less than 3 years ago, how long will it be till the former New England boy wonder’s judgment comes under question?

   I was one of the many who thought the Packers would win all their regular season games, especially after their last second victory in the Meadowlands against the Giants. I was watching the Kansas City game and it appeared to me the defending Super Bowl champs were upended by injuries on the offensive line which played into the hands of a hungry team intent on pressuring quarterback Aaron Rodgers and an offense that found a couple of trick screen plays to tight end Leonard Pope that went for 35+ yards each.

   The pundits are now talking about how Green Bay’s weaknesses have been exposed and how vulnerable they will be in the playoffs, but I’m not buying it. I like how the Packers didn’t shirk from their quest to go undefeated, unlike the Colts of the last few years who went 13-0 AND 14-0, twice took it easy and played to lose in the final weeks, and twice failed to win the Super Bowl (I wrote about it here). The Patriots kept pushing for their undefeated season and were only stopped by a talented, desperate, and very lucky Giants team in the last 2 minutes of the Super Bowl.

  This year’s Packers remind me a lot of the 1998 Denver Broncos, who were also defending Super Bowl champions (both winning from the wild card spot), and also started 13-0 in defense of their super bowl. The Broncos lost their 14th game of the year to the Giants in the last 2 minutes and only after their undefeated season was over did they rest their starters for the last 2 games to get ready for the playoffs. The Broncos cruised to the Super Bowl and I expect the Packers to do the same, barring an injury to Rodgers. They have the talent and have shown they have the will to compete in every game and expect to win every game and that leads me to expect a Green Bay Super Bowl again this year.

  Lost in the Packers first loss is another year of the 1972 Miami Dolphin’s record as the only undefeated team in NFL history. The surviving members of that squad annually have a champagne toast when there are no undefeated teams left in the NFL and they tend to be derided for celebrating other team’s losses. Ever since the Patriots managed to go through the regular season unbeaten, I think there has been far less attention paid to the Dolphins and their perfect season of 40 years ago. But each season that goes by without an undefeated team underscores just how difficult it is for a team to go undefeated and how awesome the Dolphin’s accomplishment was.

   I saw (or heard on the radio) at least half the Dolphins games that year and they were a powerhouse, smashmouth team, belying their white uniforms with the fish on the helmet. The Dolphin’s would run inside with brusier Larry Czonka and Jim Kiick behind an all-pro offensive line. When the defense would eventually try to plug the middle, then the Dolphins would run a sweep with speedster Mercury Morris or a play-action pass to Hall of Famer Paul Warfield. The defense was led by a ball-hawking secondary and bend but don’t break defense that put a premium on making the opponents offense drive down the field in small chunks, knowing they would eventually be able to force a mistake. The Dolphins even lost their Hall of Fame quarterback Bob Griese to a broken leg for over half the season and still won all their games. Compare that with last year’s playoff teams like the Chiefs, Bears, and Colts who went into the tank this year as soon as they had to turn to their backup quarterback.

  The only game I thought the Dolphins were in danger of losing all year long was the AFC championship game in Pittsburgh against the then inexperienced Steeler squad who would win 4 Super Bowls later in the decade. The Dolphins were trailing in the second half, but Griese came off the bench and rallied his team to victory. Like all great teams, the Dolphins could win in any number of ways. They chose to keep the game under control and grind out wins by running and relying on their great defense, but they could out score their opponents if needed. Being behind by a touchdown to the Dolphins that year was like being behind 2 or 3 touchdowns to another team. The Jets played them twice and the Giants once. Once they fell behind, the game seemed over because it was next to impossible to get the ball back and once they did they could barely move the ball against the great Dolphin defense.

  The Dolphins perfect season is maligned by some, who say they had one of the weakest schedules of any Super Bowl winner and during the regular season only had to play 2 teams with winning records. They were so lightly thought of during their undefeated run that they were underdogs to the Washington Redskins in the Super Bowl. But they played every team on their schedule and won, which no team in the last 40 years have been able to do. If the 1972 Dolphins come off as arrogant in celebrating their perfection, it’s OK with me. Here’s to the Dolphins who are still the only undefeated team in NFL history and the Packers for not taking the easy way out in their (unsuccessful) pursuit of perfection.

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.

Give the kid a prize!

Eleven months evolution of participation buttons and medals. What will December bring?

  I’m spending this week preparing for my first youth chess tournament in 6 weeks. I’d rather not have such a long gap between tournaments but the cafeteria at St. Francis is booked solid with other events and I was lucky to be able to get the large meeting room for this week’s tournament. I only have room for 24 boards on the supplied tables, but there are a few smaller long tables and I’ve adjusted to the new surroundings by using the profits from the last tournament that I was going to use for chess clocks to get some smaller tournaments boards and pieces instead in case I have over 50 players.

  Having a tournament so close to Christmas is a double edged sword. On the plus side, many of the competing sports activities will be shut down for the month, but the reason for that is because so many parents are traveling, attending Christmas functions, and holiday shopping. This will keep many kids from playing team sports, but I’m hopeful that there will be plenty of players and parents who want to spend a morning or afternoon playing chess.

  This will be the 12th month in a row that I’ve held an open youth tournament in the Des Moines area (14 if you count 2 parochial school only tournaments in 2010). I am a big believer in consistency and I consider this an accomplishment to be quite proud of. As the IASCA scholastic director, I wrote a website column for the chess parents each month for the 30 months I served except the first August (2006). It’s always bothered me that because I didn’t take the time to type out a few paragraphs I lost the ability to say I did something every month for 30 months.

  I’ve had over 250 different players at my chess tournaments over the first 11 months, with a high of 67 at the free tournament in October and a low of 14 at the August outdoor tournament. A lot of players come almost every month and I’ve struggled to come up with different looking trophies and medals. There are only a few trophy companies that have chess items and they have 4 or 5 different tops and a dozen or so different columns. I came up with the idea of giving out buttons with a different world chess champion as participation awards, but most of the kids have no idea who these champions of the past are and a few asked me if I put the old guy on the button because it was his birthday.

The graveyard of tournaments past,
a cousin of the 'Island of Misfit Toys'.

  I could make a different chess trophy every month for 5 years by combining the different tops and columns, but the medals posed a different challenge because there are only 7 or 8 different kinds of chess medals. When it came time to rehash the same medal design, I tried using different color ribbons (there are at least 40 different color combinations of ribbons), but the kids caught on immediately that they already had the same medal as before. And aside from all that, I kept on having left over medals and trophies after each tournament. I have trophies and medals that are 3 or 4 years old sitting in my basement. I tried to reuse the medals by putting some handmade labels on the backs so I wouldn’t have to pay an extra $1 a pop for new labels, but they looked unprofessional. I tried to order custom inserts on the medals, but the price and minimum print runs made it even more expensive and would guarantee that I’d have even more unusable medals left over.

  My medal problem was heightened when I decided to drastically reduce the number of trophies in order to halve the entry fee and give everyone a medal for participating. The new prize structure made it even more important than ever to not give out the same medals. I did a lot of research over the summer and came up with the idea of buying medals without any inserts and printing and applying the inserts myself. It worked great the first month, but by the second month I had a mostly black insert and the kids discovered they could easily scrape the ink off of them. This led me to find plastic medal covers I could stick over the inserts. It works great. I give out unique medals for every tournament I run, and the cost is less than I would pay for medals from a trophy store. I could lower the cost of the medals even more by buying thousands at a time from the Chinese wholesaler, but I’ll pass on laying out that kind of money for now.

  It is a lot of work to design a new medal insert every month, print the inserts, and assemble the medals, but it is worth it to me to be able to offer a low cost chess tournament where no one walks away empty handed and everyone has a unique memento of their chess tournament. I saw firsthand from watching the kids at my son’s chess tournaments that nothing will make a child quit playing in chess tournaments faster than watching other kids get prizes while they get nothing. I tried to forestall this day of reckoning in the larger tournaments I ran by giving out medals for first time players, prizes for lower rated players, and even custom participation ribbons. I hit on the ribbon idea when I noticed that Matt would put every ribbon he got from his Junior High cross-country meets on our refrigerator. I thought the chess participation ribbons were the best received of all the ideas, but I can’t print the ribbons myself and would lose a lot of the customization I get with the medals.

  I can’t say for sure, but I think giving out the participation medals helps to keep players coming to my tournaments. I thought by cutting down from 22 trophies to 5 trophies I’d be losing lower rated players who were missing out but instead it is the higher rated players that seem to stay away after winning a trophy or 2. Maybe it’s the risk of getting upset to hungry lower rated players or the younger players make it too noisy to play their best or maybe the trophies just aren’t big enough to justify spending a morning or afternoon playing chess. I know from my experiences and the talks I’ve had with many chess parents that after a while their children’s chess trophies all start looking alike, but I’m not about to start playing ‘Can You Top This?’ with myself and have bigger and bigger trophies.

  The absence of the higher rated players is probably due to a little of all the reasons I mentioned with a bigger dose of just being too busy. In the January and February tournaments this year, I had a pair of brothers playing in the unrated tournament that were quite talented. The younger 7 year old brother won half his games and the 11 year old won 75% of his games. And then I didn’t see them again until I got an email this week from their mom saying they were busy all year but finally had the morning of a chess tournament free to play. I am constantly tempted to write to the parents of players that seem to disappear to see if it was something about the tournaments that are driving them away, but so far I’ve resisted. Fretting about the people who don’t come to my tournaments will keep me from doing the best job I can for the people who do attend.

  While I was ordering the trophies for the December tournament and getting ready to put Boris Spassky on this month’s medal, I came across a unique trophy top. I’ve been staying away from the chess piece trophy tops and using victory figures as much as I can, but the top I saw filled me with a sense of whimsy and I decided to theme my trophies and medals with a decidedly un-chess theme. I don’t know how many more years I’ll be running monthly youth tournaments but I’ve got December trophy and medals set for every one of them.

If Santa Claus was a chess piece, would he be the king with his reindeer as the 8 pawns or perhaps a long range knight able to hop all across the chessboard?