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