The Whole School Chess Championship symbolised another opportunity to reimpose the idea of me being a decent chess player - or at least a better player than Mr. Blabbermouth. The Championship shortlisted the best players in the school through four competitions - the Class Chess Championship, the Whole School Chess Championship (the winner of this is declared Whole School Chess Champion irrespective of what happens in the following tournaments), the Problem Solving tournament, and the Chess 960/Fischer Random tournament.
The first leg of this was clearly the Class Chess Championship, which I greatly looked forward to. I wanted to win first place since I regarded Mr. Blabbermouth to be my only competition, and indirectly defeating him in the last tournament gave me much content, which was rather pointless since it did not do much when it came to muting Mr. Blabbermouth’s excuses. He claimed that I only won because my opponent in the fourth game of the last tournament made a few blunders and I lucked out. While my life did not depend on proving him otherwise, I was pissed off by his petulance.
When the Class Chess Championship started, I was determined to crush Mr. Blabbermouth and grab first place. However, I lost much of my hope when I drew my second game against an average chess player, who believed that this draw was frame-worthy, and would not stop bragging to the other players. I trucked on, and won the next two games - and gladly enough, I got to face Mr. Blabbermouth for the last game. Mr. Blabbermouth’s attitude implied that he had no doubts that the result of the game would point to his favour. His overconfidence, combined with his schmuck outlook, resulted in him being three points behind by the tenth move. Eventually, I went on to win the game - and the teacher (in this case, arbiter) said that first place was mine. By the time I got back to my classroom, many of my friends were aware of this, and they cheered me on and congratulated me. My bus journey back home was also marked by intense praise.
Much to my dismay, my mother informed me that the teacher had made a mistake by forgetting the fact that there was another player in the tournament who had also scored the same number of points that I had (4.5), and since he had drew the last game while I drew the second game, first place would go to him. I was angered and annoyed, since I was confident about the fact that I was in every way a better player than the winner of the tournament. That day was characterised by an intense feeling of hatred for myself - I believed I was “cursed” to not win first place even after I completely deserved it. Little did I know that I was indeed “destined for greater things”, as people loosely say when they aim to comfort you after such defeats.
Everyone at school was greatly puzzled the next day when they realised that I had not bagged first place. I then learnt that I was not the only person who thought that I deserved it - many people did, and this epiphany did make the process of getting over it much easier. With the passage of time, I decided to shift my focus to the Whole School Chess Championship, which the top twelve 6th, 7th, and 8th graders advanced to. It was indubitably the most important tournament as it determined who got to walk away with the fancy title of “Chess Champion” for an entire year.
Part of my confidence for the Whole School Chess Championship (November 14, 2017) was supposed to be chipped away by the fact that I was unable to have chess classes the weekend before since I was terribly under the weather. Nevertheless, I did confidently seat myself at Board 5 during the Whole School Chess Championship, and I defeated my opponent in about ten moves. In some ways, defeating that particular opponent in the first round was poetic since he was the same person who defeated me in the Class Chess Championship of 6th grade. The game finished in less than ten minutes, and I had the opportunity to view one of the most amusing games in the history of chess.
During my game, I heard whispers that Mr. Blabbermouth had already lost a Queen despite playing against a careless opponent, who I will, for the purpose of this narration, call Mr. Frivolous. Mr. Frivolous in fact failed to catch Mr. Blabbermouth’s blunder the first time, but when it went unnoticed for a second move, he snatched the opportunity to capture the Queen, and eventually the game. This performance by Mr. Blabbermouth greatly shocked every participant in the tournament. Mr. Frivolous walked from place to place WHILE playing the game, just to inform others about the sorry state that he had managed to put Mr. Blabbermouth in. Mr. Blabbermouth continued to make a comedy of errors as he lost all his confidence, and his hope of winning the tournament dwindled, eventually becoming non-existent when he lost the game. His face was a dark shade of red, and his emotions were all over the place - a brash mixture of disappointment, shame and indignation. I have never been a self proclaimed expert at judging someone else’s feelings, so all I can assure the reader is the fact that I was pretty happy. I knew for a fact that I felt similar amounts of shame every time he tried to discredit any and all of my achievements, so I just deemed it to be a classic example of karma.
The news of Mr. Blabbermouth’s loss travelled like lightning throughout the school, and I figured that out during lunch break when I gained the awareness that even Mr. Silent, who barely played chess, knew about what happened. Knowing that I had won the first three games, my acquaintances gave me their best wishes, since I was paired with the player who was thought to be my strongest competitor in the school at that time. While I expected to either draw or lose that game, I ended up winning with the help of an effective pin created by my rook. I went on to capture all of his pawns, and I won the game by resignation. At the end of this match, I was the only person to have won all four games, so all I needed was a draw in the next game in order to win the title. This was pointed out by my chess teacher, to whom I comically asked if there were any other players who had won all four games, keeping the last tournament in mind. This was reassured to me a handful of times, and so, I drew the last game so I could get to class early in order to finish the schoolwork I had missed throughout the day. I returned to class, only to figure out that everyone was at the biology lab (BORING), but I asked Mr. Silent what I missed, and he filled me in with everything that happened while I was away. He did express a fair amount of satisfaction and happiness when he learned that I ultimately won.
Being the so-called “Chess Champion” at school, I received a fair amount of acknowledgement, and of course, a ridiculous posse of people who collectively agreed that I was “undefeatable”. While I am usually repulsed by the idea of receiving too much attention, I secretly enjoyed the pain that was being caused to Mr. Blabbermouth. I truly believed that he had finally got what he deserved.
That being said, there were two more tournaments left, Problem Solving and Chess 960, and the result of these games brought a colossal change in my mode of learning chess. For the purpose of continuity, I ought to mention the fact that the chess teacher will play a great role (when I say “great”, I mean “major”, not “notable”, because what he did was abhorrent) in the next part of this story, so he will be assigned a pseudonym.
To be continued in Part 3.