Tournaments

Hey, everyone!  I just thought it might be cool to tell you all that I was in a chess tournament today.  It wasn't rated and I had to play as the only girl out of 12 kids in the Senior high section.  We sat down about a half hour before our games started and had to listen to very detailed instuctions which I didn't mind because I was playing in a different kind of tournament.  While, the director was talking, I was disgusted to see the way the rest of the boys except for one were acting.  They were fooling around with the clocks, the pieces and even teasing me for being so serious and sedicated to this awesome sport.  I was also upset to find that some of these boys were my own classmates.  After the director was through explaining, he asked if anyone had questions.  It was only younger kids who hadn't played much and were just a little unshure of the rules.  The person sitting accross from me that was about to play looked at all the players in our section and said,"Who cares?"  When I raised my hand a little to show that it was pretty important to me, he replied, "Then no one cares about you."  After getting laughed at by the players including the ones from my own school, I said to him, "I guess we know who's here to win and who's here to lose."  After that, he was quiet.  I was so mad at him for acting that way and I showed it in the games we played.  I beat him quickly after he was thinking he could mate me with his queen when my knight was there ready to capture it.  In the second game, he made three illegal moves all resulted from moving a piece when he was in check.  You all remember it's not legal to say check, right?  I forgot to aware a supervisor the first time he did it, so when I reported he did it twice, they could only count it once.  Fortunately, he did it again and I was able to claim a win.

     The only other person that I was able to play was a player from another school who I could tell was a more serious player and wasn't as quick to joke about it.  I beat him the first time by time and he beat me in the second game with checkmate with only 10 seconds left on his clock.  By the way, this is a tournament that does a 15 minute blitz.  After playing him both times, one of his friends came up to me and told me that it was pretty incredible that I beat him even though he beat me.  I told him how I practiced every day, was a member of the USCF, and how I was weekly getting coached and going to a chess club.  He was very surprised how dedicated I was. 

    It turned out after being one of three people who won 3 out of four games, I got a second place ribbon.  Last year when I went to this tournament, I was half a point away from getting third and I was the only one in my school to get one this year.  When I went up to the desk to get it, one of the rude gentlemen that was there asked if the reason I played was to win a ribbon.  I replied, "Pretty much.  What's your reason?" and I'm very disappointed to say he said,"To get a day off from school."  Those kinds of people really get my goat and it only encourages me to practice harder and harder every day.  Tell me what you think of this.