Understanding the Tournament Experience as a UX/UI Designer (My First Tournament).

Though I was unable to participate in the City of Sydney Rapid Chess tournament, I still wanted to understand a chess player's tournament experience. I wanted to confirm for myself the differences between online and over-the-board chess. And so I signed up for the City of Sydney Blitz Chess tournament.

Blitz was definitely not my choice of time control. My comfort zone was Classical Chess where each player was given an hour on their clock. Whereas Blitz was 3 minutes with an additional 2 seconds per move. I walked away from the tournament with an abysmal result of 2 points out of 8. That's 2 wins out of 8 games - and 1 was a bye!

Despite my terrible result, I walked away with something far more precious. Immediately, I noticed something different with physical pieces. In my first game, I made an illegal move and my opponent called the arbiter. I smiled sheepishly as the arbiter added an extra minute to my opponent's clock. In online chess I never had to worry about making an illegal move as the game won't let me. Not only was I embarrassed, my train of thought was broken when the arbiter was called over and the psychological impact on the extra minute my opponent had over me had a tremendous impact on the game.

Something else I noticed was how much I missed 'pre-moves'. In online chess, you're able to preemptively make a move on your opponents turn. This poses risks in most circumstances, however this comes handy when your opponent is pushed into a forced sequence of moves. In over the board chess, you obviously don't have this luxury. And to further complicate things, you are required to move the piece with the same hand you hit the clock to mark the end of your turn. In my 6th game, I had 5 seconds left and despite having checkmate in 1 move, I fumbled my piece and my time elapsed - resulting in my loss. It really felt like the game was stolen from me. 'If only this was online, I would've won this match.'

Finally, I definitely felt the difference in my performance with 3D pieces. Having been used to playing chess on a 2D screen I never had to worry about pieces being outside my field of vision. Some of you who've read this far may think I must have peanuts for eye sockets. But in rare occasions I'd find myself tunnel visioning and not notice a fianchettoed bishop on the top right corner of the board, therefore blundering a piece. There's also the sensation of the pieces. The touch, feel and sound of the pieces clattering against the board gave the game a sort of rhythmic feel. The 'click-clack' of the pieces would put me in a trance, and It felt as though I was composing a Beethoven symphony. My flow would instantly come to a halt when my opponent makes a dubious or inquisitive move. I would sneak a glance and try to calculate the moves as quick as possible to find a response, and the percussion ensemble would ensue. As poetic as that sounds, I'd imagine to the outside observer it was just a mundane series of taps, but the experience was certainly positive to say the least. 

In my UX/UI design course, I've been taught to always put my self in the shoes of the user. I have yet to participate in my first Classical Chess tournament, but I'm glad that I can finally say I understand chess players a little better.

This was a long post, but if you made it this far, thank you for sharing my passion with the chess world and UX/UI design.

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