South Hobart go to the Chess Nationals

Marcus and I had a couple of days in Melbourne with the school chess team, at the National Schools Chess Championships. The team was Marcus, Fergus, Joe and Tom. The Ed Dept rules say that all interstate school excursions must be accompanied by a teacher, so the principal Cathy Franz decided to come with us. She reasoned that she could do a lot of her work remotely, unlike class teachers. Cathy actually paid her own way to Melbourne as well as personally donating to help cover the families' costs. Our former principal Greg Turner also donated.

Cathy picked up Marcus and I and then Fergus at 4.30am. Joe's dad Andrew dropped Joe and Tom off at the airport shortly after we arrived. All aboard with no problems. I sat with the Grade 4s Ferg & Tom, who played iPhone games. Cathy sat behind with the Grade 6s Joe and Marcus, who had a couple of games on the magnetic chess board as we crossed Bass Strait.

Last time I was at Tullamarine I waited half an hour for a cab, but we had no trouble getting a taxi van to Queens College, our home for the next 2 days. A nice fella named Ross intercepted us on our way in and showed us the ropes. Magnetic keys etc. Rooms were small but fine, with very high ceilings. The college is quite fetching, castellated buildings in classic Oxbridge style. Our rooms were just a short walk across the quad from the dining hall which was also the competition venue.

We had a bit of settling in time, then Day 1 of the tournament kicked off. The day panned out like this;

• Marcus: win loss win win
• Tom; loss loss loss win
• Joe: loss win loss loss
• Fergus: loss win loss win

Tom’s third game was one he should have had no trouble with - but he was very tired and a bit headachey. He had a panadol and came out very well in his 4th game. After winning his first game, Marcus was sent to the Nº 1 table to play the top seed, Kris Chan. He aimed to hang on for 20 moves and just managed it. (Marcus is rated about 940 and Kris about 1550).

Joe and Fergus (both mid 600s) lost a couple of games against high 800 rated players. Considering our early start to the day, it was great to finish off strongly with three wins from the four final round games. In all we scored 7 points from a possible 16 and were placed 17th of 23 schools at the end of the day. Our boys were all hoping to get at least one win in the tournament, and they had all achieved that by the end of Day 1.

Cathy paid for a wristband to have access to the "VIP Suite", where one-on-one coaching and seminars were offered. Marcus went through his games with a coach; later Joe took the wristband and listened in to some seminars on strategy and tactics.

We had penne bolognaise for dinner, floppy penne but good chunky sauce - needed black pepper though. Boys all seem happy with the food, apparently it is superior to that dished up on the recent Canberra trip. After dinner we just took a walk around the University area, then put everyone to bed by 8.30. The boys each had their own room; we considered pairing them up with mattresses on the floor but they were all content to be on their own. Neither Cathy or I heard a peep all night.

Day 2 of competition turned out to be very tough. Tom improved on his Day 1 effort, getting a win and a draw. The other boys only mustered two draws between them, for a return of 2.5 points from a possible 12. We slipped to finish 22nd - which was disappointing after such a good Day 1, but reflected our position as equal 5th in Tasmania. The boys were not downhearted and showed excellent sportsmanship.

We walked them down to Lygon Street for ice-cream, and a visit to Readings bookshop, which was our only off-campus excursion of the two days. On the way we talked about the differences between Carlton and South Hobart – I think the preference was for South Hobart. When we got back to Queens it was time to head to the airport. Although worn out, the team were well behaved and I was proud to be out in public with them.

It was a great experience for the boys and hopefully will have good spin-off effects on the rest of the school as well. Thanks to the parents, the School Association, staff and students and especially Greg Turner, Cathy Franz and school business officer Bev Thomas for supporting our trip.

Tasmanian Interschool Chess Finals

We went up Launceston last Monday for the State chess finals.Our team was Marcus, Tom, Fergus, Joe and Izzy. None of the other parents could make it, so Elf came along to share the driving and supervising/encouraging duties. And that meant Michael had to come along too, and he fell into his accustomed low-key support role combined with some puppety bouncing around. The school paid for us to hire a people-mover for the day, which was really good of them.

We started brilliantly. Our captain Marcus won his first 4 games, and everyone had some points after round 4 (one point for a win, half for a draw). Our newest player Izzy had 2 wins, and some of the boys started to get nervous they might miss out on medals. Team score is based on your 4 highest scorers, and if the team places, only those 4 get the medals - always a tricky situation. The team as a whole were doing so well that medal allocation seemed like a problem we may well be dealing with by the end of the day.

Marcus was still unbeaten after 6 games and in equal 3rd. His 6th game was a superb win against a quality player rated well above Marcus. Marcus knew the other boy sometimes ran into time problems (each player has a 15 minute limit) and so he just kept setting up awkward situations where his opponent had to spend time deciding what to do. One rushed poor decision put him into an unwinnable position, and he resigned.

Meanwhile Joe who had a slow start was winning and not worrying so much about medals. Izzy plateau'd after her early success then won, and won again. Fergus had 5 points after 7 rounds and looked like a million dollars. Tom won his first 2 then lost 4 on the trot, and was starting to think about missing medals again.

At one point the team were equal-3rd. In the run home Marcus lost two in a row. He felt they were opponents he should have beaten, but he didn't make mistakes - he was just outplayed. Joe ended up winning his last five straight! Tom bounced back and won his last three. The sky had seemed the limit for Fergus but he lost his last 2 matches. The scores we finished with were Marcus and Joe 6.5, Fergus 5, Tom 5 and Izzy 4.

We were a little disappointed to have slipped in the placings - at some stage I think each of us had started to dream of getting a podium finish. As we sat and waited for the tallying to be completed, Marcus was a little emotional. Michael made us very proud by comforting him, and said quietly to Elf "I think when you are very good at something it must be hard when you don't do so well".

We finished in equal 5th, but 6th on countback. As the top 5 qualify for an invitation to the National Interschool Finals, I thought we had just missed out. Some of the kids thought it was announced that we had qualified, but when nothing came in the email during the subsequent week I told everyone that I didn't think so. And in fact I was a bit relieved because I (and I'm sure some other parents) didn't fancy finding money for flights and accommodation at short notice.

Then to my surprise, an email came yesterday, 8 days after the finals, with some details about the Nationals - which are in just 4 short weeks. I got in touch to clarify, and it turned out that if teams are equal 5th, they are all invited and countback is ignored. So we were in! I dutifully emailed the school and said I was prepared to go with the team, but we had better get fundraising pronto if we are going to get a team over there. I imagined parents thinking, like me, that it's lovely to earn an invitation but it's just money we don't have to spare.

Lo and behold the school, the school association and our sensational ex-principal have all today said they are so delighted the school chess team has achieved this, that they are going to contribute what's required to get us over there. There may have been school sports teams travel interstate before during our 8 year-long involvement, but I can't actually remember any. This is quite a big deal, and I am blown away that everyone is recognising that.