Friday, May 29 2008: Two of the best chess players at our school battle each other in the first-ever school chess tournament for the trophy.
On Friday, May 29th, 2008 at our school in Washington, two of the best chess players faced off. Both had successfully made it through a test of skill in the first ever double-elimination chess tournament held at the school. The details of the second game of this championship battle were recorded by the author of this article.
Note: The champions’ names will remain undisclosed until further notice. We will refer to the winner of the winner’s bracket as Player 1 and the winner of the loser’s bracket as Player 2.
In the first game, Player 2 beat Player 1, and because this was Player 1’s first loss, the two had to battle each other again. This, as Player 2 would say, would be “a battle to the death”. After the game, we weren’t so sure if that final game really was.
In the opening of the second game, Player 1 was white and Player 2 was black. Player 1 opened by moving a pawn two spaces forward. Player 2 mirrored the move, so to speak. This continued with a few other moves. The knights were out, taking pawns and anything in their zigzag path. Then, Player 1 mobilizes his queen, and brings it out. Player 2 starts moving his pawns out, forming a discontinuous line of pawns. This lead to Player 2 being put in check by the opponent’s queen. By this time, both players have most of their pawns out. Player 2 sets up a queen-for-queen trade, quite a risky move. All of a sudden out of nowhere, Player 1 realizes he has a pawn at the other end of the board and promotes that pawn to a second queen. Despite the unexpected pawn promotion, Player 1 keeps walking his pawns. By this time, all of Player 2’s pieces are huddled in a corner (except for an out lier pawn), while Player 1’s pieces cover the whole board. The game suddenly ends when Player 1 puts Player 2 in checkmate with two queens and a bishop. There wasn’t even much of an endgame.