The worst chess tournament I competed in!

In the beginning of November last year my dad asked me and my brother if we wanted to compete in in the K - 12 scholastic nationals and I said that I wanted to. My brother was a bit skeptical, but I was excited to compete with kids my age over the board. In the end my brother also agreed, but around Thanksgiving it got cancelled due to Covid-19! Then Chesskid said they would be hosting a replacement tournament that would be almost exactly like the nationals, but online. We decided to compete in it. For prizes there was a different system than usual. For every point a player earned two raffle tickets and for the raffle prizes there were mini camps coached by Former World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand and free two year gold membership on Chesskid along with some other stuff. Each member was also supposed to get free two month gold membership(or extension to the gold membership if you already have it)  just for competing.

We had spent the whole week before the tournament preparing and working very hard, two lessons a day. My brother and I were doing as many lessons on Chesskid as we could. Because I already had gold membership and my dad also had it, we could do as many lessons we wanted (my brother did lessons on my dad's account). I wanted to compete because the nationals were cancelled and I would be competing with my grade. On the day of the tournament I woke up to an alarm and felt tired and worried that I would not do that good. The tournament had a very funny setup, you were supposed to wait in live chess and they would pair you up. There was no join button that you had to click on, so it was a bit confusing. On top of all that, a lot of kids had misspelled their username in  the registration and so they had hundreds of invalid usernames and the pairing system crashed. They had to pair everybody manually, which took a long time and then some sections were having problems, including mine. I was very irritated and was mumbling "Chesskid is horrible" the whole time. I actually didn't get a game in round one! Before the tournament I was happy that I would be playing on Chesskid, but now that I think back I would be much happier playing on chess.com because it never has issues, or at least none that I know of. The tournament was being commentated and the commentators said that if you did not get a game that meant your opponent did not show up and you would get a forfeit bye. This made me feel a little bit better, but I was still angry. My brother also won his game and said that it was very intense. In round two I got a game, but lost it very badly. I was a up a pawn, but then blundered very plainly for my level. I promptly lost my rook and queen and went from being up a pawn to being down a queen and a rook and resigned. I was very, very sad and didn't really want to play anymore, but my dad said I needed to play till the end because I was committed to it and I needed to develop grit. My brother also lost his game.

As my brother and I waited for another game, we  found out that we could put our mouse on the pawn under New Game and drag it into the browser and we could see the pgn. The best part about it is that the name of the file was called peshka happy and peshka is how you say pawn in Russian! How we knew this is because we speak Russian. While we were playing with peshka happy, as we called it, we were also watching the slack and found that the tournament was reduced to six rounds as before it had been 7. I was pretty happy, but my brother was not. Then the tournament was reduced to 5 rounds and we found out that we were done with games for today as the tournament was two days long. Originally there were supposed to be 4 rounds on the first day and 3 on the second, but they reduced it to 2 rounds on the first day and 3 on the second.

When I woke up the next day, we ate a small snack and found out that the tournament was cancelled and that our games did not count to anything. They made a mini replacement tournament, but it was not US chess rated.  When they cancelled the tournament they gave full refund and instead of two months of gold membership they gave each kid four months of gold membership or an extension, although the raffle was cancelled. At this I was very sad because I was hoping for a 2 year gold membership(or extension) or the mini camp. Well, there you have it, my worst tournament that I competed in.

I hope you didn't enjoy it and please leave a comment.