My First Moves - Spring Edition

Coach Emile
1 day ago
2 min read

Updated: 2 hours ago

Our youngest beginners had to rise early on 24 May, the third MFM tournament moved to a morning timeslot with a 10am start.

19 of our students joined this time around and we continued the same formula. The very youngest in the B-group get a taste of competition by playing our Step Method mini games while the A-group play "real" games and even get introduced to playing with a clock. They'll be ready in no time to join our End of Month cycle!

Coach Matthew led Group B which this time had no less than 7 girls!!! The start of the girl student pipeline looks good!

*Group B Ready for start with Mini Game: Which Knight Captures the Opponent Pieces Fastest?*

Mini games included a race of capturing pawns with a rook or bishop, a special knight mission to capture all pieces behind enemy lines and other rules-and-piece-knowledge-enforcing mini games. There was also a "real" game with all pieces on the board.

Group B in Action

To practice both colors, Group B played a double round, that is, 2 games against each opponent, one with black and one with white. And it was very close at the top. On tie-break Isla got First Prize and Valerie Second Prize, both with 9 points out of 12. Tyler ended third with 8 points. All three: good luck next time in Group A!

Group A was led by Coach David. The 8 players would play the first game without timer and the remaining 4 rounds with a timer and learn about illegal moves, pressing the clock with the correct hand, calling in an arbiter as needed, and in general they got a real taste of the excitement of competitive play, celebrating winning and overcoming a lost game.

Group A in Action

In Group A we saw players in action who could not always find the right order of moves or solutions to convert a winning position comfortably into a point (checkmate in one) and some players on the other hand experienced a narrow escape, winning a hopeless lost position. Play at this level is romantic and the great Morphy would have walked around with a smile on his face if he could have watched the action.

In the end Beverly and Dao clinched 3rd and 2nd place respectively on tie-break both with 3.5 points. One full point loose was Qisheng who won First Prize. Congratulations to all three as you have now left the MFM and are ready for EOM events.

Final Ranking Cross Table Group A

In between the rounds major action was only indirectly related to chess - coloring in chess drawings and finding the end of the maze for the Queen to escape.