Children's chess

Yesterday I was helping officiate at the Cardiff and Vale schools chess competitions, Under 8s and Under 9s section. Most of them could just about move the pieces. If anyone has ever been involved in organising children's chess, you might appreciate some of the following:

> Both kings checkmated at the same time

> No kings on the board, just one pawn each

> Little boy puts his hand up and complains that his opponent was cheating. I saw the incident and intervened. She had blundered her queen then tried to take the move back. I said look come on, you took your hand off the piece, and you pressed the clock, so I'm sorry but that's your move. He jumps up in celebration and shouts "Yay I've won her queen!". Once he's calmed down and sat down, he looks at the board again, and at some stage the idea of capturing the queen must have slipped from his mind. He moved some other piece instead. I had to leave the room to stop myself bursting out laughing.

> Another premature celebration. Little girl puts her hand up, and it's clear that it's just to show off, because as I arrive the goes "I've PROMOTED a pawn!". Picks up the new queen, and triumphantly slams it down on the promotion square, beaming with pride. However, it was en prise from a knight, and her opponent just took it.

> Boy castled his queen

lol.............

HA! funny and cute.

This is coming round again in a couple of weeks time. Hmm, I wonder what great moves we might see this year...

I remember as a child I was playing and the board next to me checkmated his opponent, but the tournament director said it wasn't checkmate.  30 minutes later they called him back after the checkmated kid still hadn't found a legal move and he admitted that yes it was checkmate.

Lol. I'll try not to do that on Sunday anyway... I've got the under 8s again by the look of it.

Another thing we had last year was we caught a parent cheating - telling his daughter moves through the window! Pathetic really.

I'll post anything funny here anyway

Lol, I'll track that thread. :)

Cardiff and the Vale Schools Under 8s 2012

> Boy captured his own knight! (I didn't personally see this, but the arbiter who did said she "couldn't be bothered" intervening and just let them carry on...)

> Little girl puts her hand up and tells me that she has promoted a pawn, but still has her queen on the board so needs another queen. I told her to use an upside-down rook as a second queen. She seemed happy with this and I let them carry on. 5 minutes or so later, I returned to look at the same game, and the 'queen' had morphed into a rook! She must have picked it up and put it back down the other way up, neither player noticed and they just carried on with a rook on the board instead of a queen.

> Boy marched his king out to c3 in the opening before moving any of his other pieces. Amazingly, he went on to win.

EDIT: Corrected typo in point 3, originally wrote queen instead of king

Ah, why not dig this ancient thread up again, since this is coming around again in a couple of weeks? No doubt I'll get the Under 8s again (although it could have a 1600 player in it this year, the best prospect Welsh chess has had for a long time. It'll be comical watching her play some of the others)

There was a classic one last year where the black queen is on d8, the white king on e1, white rook on h1, and a white pawn on the line between g2 and h2! White black plays Qh4+, which in mate in 1 if the pawn is on h2, but if the pawn is on g2 simply drops the queen to Rxh4. White plays Rxh4, and they start hitting each other...

ROFL

Agree.

To be fair, this year's under 8s passed without anything too ridiculous

I need to read this thread everyday as soon as i logon.

Don't forget triple-check, which is rarely seen in chess games between adults. 

Good thread, good bump.

I was an assistant to the tournament director (TD) at a big schoolastic chess tournament in Tampa.  If the kids had a question or concern, they raised a hand.

One young girl about 8 years old raised her hand to claim draw by repetition against her young boy opponent.  She clearly and correctly explained her claim, which I was about to award to her, when another assistant swooped in and said "play on!".  Her official ruling: "The draw by repetition rule didn't apply to him 'cause he hadn't learned that yet".  The head TD showed up, but chose not to over-rule her (so she could save face, I guess).  Unfortunately, justice did not prevail for the young girl since her deserved draw turned into a loss.  To her credit, she took this all very calmly, even though she understood that she had been short-changed.

Ouch!

@Turbofish that's very harsh. Are you sure there wasn't any conflict of interest or lack of neutrality present in the equation? I take the attitude that in order to play proper serious chess, the minimum requirement should be that they are expected to know all the rules of the game.

I don't know if there was a conflict of interest (like woman assistant TD being a relative of the young boy, or maybe a friend of the family).  I hope it wasn't anything that blatant.  My guess is that the head TD didn't want to lose a volunteer worker by embarassing her.  He heard my side of the story, and indicated that he understood me clearly (and did not disagree with me), but never-the-less went ahead with this irregular decision.  On that particular day, he seemed to  consider keeping the volunteer crew intact more important than meticulous application of the chess rules.  I respectfully disagreed, but he had the final say.  I don't want to name names since normally this TD works very hard to run a scholastic chess program worthy of public support.

You could argue that technically she is right if they weren't writing the moves down (which is assume was the case if they were 8?)

I suppose that in a game where every third move is an illegal move anyway, both kings spend half the game in check, and pieces get lost by being knocked off the table by arms being waved about.... What harm is one strange refereeing decision on top of all the other stuff?