When you picture a chess tournament, you probably think of a quiet room where everything is still except for the movement of the occasional chess piece. That was not an accurate picture of our 7th grade chess tournament. Our chess tournament was an exciting, noisy and funny culminating event for Lincoln Lutheran's annual 7th grade chess day.
"You got to help other people learn how to play chess, and play on the big board. It was fun playing people that you wouldn't normally get to play." --Dalton Fenner
The 3rd of September was our Retreat Day, but because of transportation and supervision requirements it isn't possible for every class to have their retreat on the same day. Instead, the 6th graders have their retreat a few days before the 3rd and the 7th graders have their retreat a few days after the 3rd. So each year, on Retreat Day, Mr. Chaffee and I lead the 7th graders through a series of chess related activities.
[NOTE: click on the small images for full size versions]
After a devotion and some warm-up activities we watch the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. It's a great movie that captures our 7th graders attention. It piques their interest in chess, but doesn't require any actual knowledge about how to play chess.
After the movie I introduce the 7th graders to the chess pieces (it looks like a complicated game, but there are only 6 different pieces). We play little games with the individual pieces to get familiar with how they move before moving to full games. They guys always point out that the king is the most important piece. The gals counter with, "yeah, but the queen is the most powerful."
"The movie was good. I liked watching Josh learn to play chess" --Will Hutchison
Learning chess also requires some one on one instruction. Mr. Chaffee and I couldn't do it by ourselves; luckily every year just about half of the 7th graders already know how to play, so when we divide up into pairs it is always one person who knows how to play and one who doesn't. The experienced students know that their job isn't to win the game; it's to make sure that their partner can win the next game.
"In the tournament it was hard to predict how people were going to move. The movie was cool. --Krista Schmidt
After lunch we hold a chess tournament. A normal tournament with brackets would mean that some students would only play 2 games, so instead we do a sort of round robin tournament. We don't do a real round robin tournament because then you would have to wait around for your next opponent to finish. Instead we divide into two levels: everyone who knew how to play before our chess day in one group and everyone who just learned how to play in another. The 7th graders can play anyone in their group. When they finish a game they report who won and who lost. Then we enter that information into a computer program and they go find someone else from their group to play. At the end of the tournament the computer program looks at who beat who and determines the final ranking (much like college football).
This year in the group that already knew how to play chess our tournament leaders were:
- Tyler Knapp
- Sidnee Lebsock
- Andrew Wendland
- Nathan Eames
- Dakota Judds
- Edward Merrill
- Josiah Kettelhake
- Jehnsen Lebsock
Amoung our new chess players our tournament leaders were:
- Tanner Wachal
- Maryah Harding
- Payton Hedlund
- Lia Havlena
- Tara Ziegelbein
- Luke Alby
- Brianne Schleckebier
- Jacob Green
Why learn chess? Chess is not only fun to play but has many educational benefits as well. Chess helps to develop pattern visualization, patience, memory, abstract reasoning, originality and creativity, awareness of the consequences of actions, Concentration and focus. Not only that, studies show that students who learn how to play chess perform better in math (which makes sense) and in English (go figure).
"it was better than going to school and the tournament was fun because you could play chess with a lot of different people." --Trenten Craig
All of the students at Lincoln Lutheran who attended in 7th grade have learned how to play chess. If you haven’t had a chance yet, it might be fun to ask your son or daughter to play a game of chess. If you don’t know how to play (or if you’ve forgotten) you could ask them to teach you. And don’t feel bad if they beat you. If you don't have a chess set, we do a group order from a chess wholesaler each year in time for Christmas.
