What Happened? The very first Chess Tournament

What Happened?

We started our club with a bunch of kids but ultimately ended up with just a few kids who came in every day after school to play chess. Odd I really didn’t have them for my regular classes but we played every day after school…

“Guys you want to go to a chess tournament at Leal Middle school on Saturday?  Well meet me on the parking lot at 8 a.m. and we’ll go from there.” I took my pickup truck and threw the kids in the back and we went.  I did not know what to expect…We entered the school cafeteria and I walked over with my boys to what looked like the registration table...  The adults looked up and I swear they saw ‘fresh meat’ written on our foreheads… “Hey I  wanna register my kids for the chess tournament.. “  Little that I know the 3 clubs that played regularly there were honed to perfection, not just a few kids but big clubs with about 20 or more players a piece all with several years of competition experience…Does it make a difference?

Round 1

The kids found their places started the game and almost to the man they came back within 2 minutes. “Whoa, what happened?” I asked really puzzled, since our games had gone at after school practice at least and hour or more and they were regularly beating me… “ They beat us in 4 moves “ almost to the man they replied.  I set up our cardboard set, and told me what they did…It looked like this:  Our guys brought out their pieces (we played any pawn out or knight not really knowing any fancy openings) but they described what happened to a ‘T’…  

Scholar’s Mate

The other kids knew the minute they sat across the board that we were ‘noobs’.  They could tell by the pieces our guys opened with that we were really just beginners. 

So to not stay playing long they all went for the fast kill.

Scholar’s Mate is where the Kings pawn comes out followed by the Queen diagonally and the Bishop on the other diagonal. From there they focus on the pawn next to 

opponents King and Bada bing …check mate.

This Moves How?

Living in San Antonio back in the 60’s was….well it was just that….boring….I rode my banana bike from Sears with the leopard print on the seat and gold paint it was about as exciting as my life was at that time.  

...up and down..

I lived on a short “dead end” block...I mean if you traveled to the end of the street there was this 6ft high fence that separated our boring world from the local airbase..

So that was me...up and down...up and down...up and down...Springtime...up and down….up and down….Summer time “hot”...up and down.....up and down..Fall Time...up and down.....up and down..Winter...yeah Christmas...follow the kids with the new bicycles…...up and down.....up and down..

Sure we played baseball on the vacant lot...then played football...then played war with toy guns...then played Star Trek….I was Bones….and then...up and down.....up and down..the street...well then one day my friend and I were looking at the Montgomery Wards Catalog and we saw this game...Hockey….table hockey..the kind of game that unlike foosball (which hadn’t been invented at that time… kinda look like this…

Well dang talk about playing that game to death...we played and played and played….

Now before you say “Hey that’s it?”  It was the 60’s remember...however the music was awesome.

Now I did read a lot...I mean look in less than 400 words I described every summer during those times. 

Well till a friend of mine bought a dimestore chess game..  Well we all read the instructions. But I couldn’t remember all the moves. But I tried and lost...my first game….did i tell you that stuck in my craw for a long time….till 1981 when I took to a chess board and game again….