Our First Simul! (and his too...)

10 Year-Old Chess Whiz!

This past week, the Wingfield H.S. Chess Team (in Jackson, Mississippi) hosted our first simultaneous exhibition.  We were overjoyed to have our buddy Ryan Wu (USCFR 1613) stop by to play the entire team.  It was a powerful demonstration to the teens on our team about the power of hard work.  Ryan works constantly on his chess, often using resources here on Chess.com in addition to his lessons with IM David Ross and visits to the Capital City Chess Club -- which is where the kids met him.  

Though I tried to warn some of the newbies, who'd never met 10 year-old Ryan, that they would likely meet a swift demise in this exhibition, several egos went unchecked and reality set in... HARD.  The highest rated player on our Wingfield Team is approximately 600. 

Ryan made such easy work of all of them that it was difficult to believe this was his first time being the featured player at a simul.  So at least when Ryan becomes World Champ some day, we can always lay claim to being his first simul victims.  LOL.

Raucous Fun

If you watch the video of our encounter below, you can soon tell by about the 5 minute mark that the silent, studious nature of most simuls had degraded into a rowdy and joking classic teenager-ridden environment.  While at first I tried to calm the kids down, Ryan seemed to enjoy watching their reactions, and so, by minute 6 there is a full room of loud-mouths all teasing Marquez (the Nike sweatshirt) about how Ryan held off a checkmate, toying with him like a ball of string in the hands of a lion.  What I regret wasn't caught on camera was the eventual chant of "MATE HIM NOW!  MATE HIM NOW!" (complete with desk pounding) throughout the room that resulted from the events around minute eight.

All in all, this event was entirely too much fun had by all and we cannot WAIT to do it again.  Now that all of our sillies are out, perhaps next time, the Wingfield teens will be able to focus enough to notate and learn immensely from their encounters with the sweet, but deadly, Ryan Wu.