Queens of Chess

Today I spent a good chunk of the day with Kelly at a chess tournament. It was divided into two classes, K-3 and 4-6. We left home around 7:30am, and returned around 4:15pm. The tournament itself was a sequence of five games for each player, lasting as long as they took. Turnaround was about an hour a game.

Kelly lost her first three games, but was upbeat about it. "It's just a game." I'm convinced that if she was serious about chess she'd have done much better, but I don't mind that she treats it casually. She won her fourth game against a younger player who really clearly didn't have much idea of what she was doing. Then she fought her fifth game to a stalemate. She could have won this one, but wasn't really being careful, and trapped her opponent's king without checking it.

There were 72 kids in the tournament, and when we left, the midday rankings were all that had been posted. Kelly was ranked 44th after her third game. They're supposed to post final results on their website, and I'll update this post when I know.

Kelly wanted to stay for the awards ceremony, so we stuck around, and I watched several of the other games. When it was down to one I watched the whole thing. One of the players really should have resigned. She was in no position to win, but kept playing. The other player could have mated her in another six or so moves, but decided she wanted to win without promoting one of her pawns, so took much longer. Hence our late arrival home.

Will Kelly want to play in any more tournaments? I don't know today, but she was really positive about the whole experience. I enjoyed myself despite walking around with a wrenched back I inflicted on myself mid-week. Needless to say, I'm sleeping in tomorrow.