North Jr. High Spring Scholastic Chess Tournament
Saturday, March 7, 2020
North Junior High School, 15325 Highway 41 N., Evansville, IN 47725
AWARDS:
1st and under: Trophies 3 Places Medallions 4th-6th
3rd and under: Trophies 12 Places; Medallions 13th-24th
6th and under: Trophies 20 Places; Medallions 21st-40th
8th and under: Trophies 10 Places; Medallions 11th-15th
12th and Under: Trophies 8 Places; Medallions 9th-15th
Top 3 Team Trophies per section, top 4 scores used per team.
Four- Six rounds anticipated for all sections. No one is eliminated.
Player's Meeting at 9:00 am.
Round One starts at 9:20 A.M. Following rounds begin ASAP.
Entry fee: $10 On-SITE Registrations must be there before 8:45am.
Call or email to confirm availability. Food will be available on site.
Our tournament will have many inexperienced players as well as some with high USCF ratings.....great for all ages and skill levels.
Information: Mike Maguire meteormike@msn.com 812-454-1675 or 812-867-0975 Please pass this on to any chess players that you know in the Tri-State(IN/IL/KY).
Coverage from our chess tournament last year:
"One of the more experienced players was Joseph Ward, 13, a student at North Junior High. Joseph had gone 2-1 in his first three matches and was waiting for the fourth round to start.
“We’ve always played in my family,” he said. “I started playing in kindergarten. My brother has taught me a lot about the game, and of course Mr. Maguire.”
Joseph said he enjoyed the strategy of chess but that the lessons it teaches are not limited to what happens on the board during a game.
“You look at the board, and you try to predict what the other player will do,” he said. “But you have to be able to see all the options
“I think it helps me in how I look at the world,” Joseph continued. “I want to be able to see all the options I have with what I want to do my life. Playing chess has taught me that it helps to consider many different possibilities.”
Perfect Weather forecast for this Saturday:
Temperature: 30 early, rising to 52
Near calm wind.
Sorry but cant participate this year.
Just kidding mm.
Its a wonderful thing youre doing.
John
Thanks John!
Meet my Dad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mg5a2DYyXQ
Frank Maguire, 90, plays a game of chess in his west Dearborn home. The nonagenarian taught his son, Mike, to play 50 years ago, and Mike in turn has taught scores of students the game as a chess coach in Indiana. Elizabeth Barbieri — For The Press & Guide
Meet the world chess champion since 2012, Magnus Carlsen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc_v9mTfhC8
Meet the most famous women's grand master. This one is almost an hour long
https://www.onlinecollegecourses.com/2012/03/25/10-big-brain-benefits-of-playing-chess/
Not for nothing is chess known as “the game of kings.” No doubt the rulers of empires and kingdoms saw in the game fitting practice for the strategizing and forecasting they themselves were required to do when dealing with other monarchs and challengers. As we learn more about the brain, some are beginning to push for chess to be reintroduced as a tool in the public’s education. With benefits like these, they have a strong case.
The chess tournament was a smashing success.
We had 195 students, grades K-12 sign up. No shows were not significantly different than previous years.
I was celebrating last week over the fact that the expected ramp up of the Coronavirus panic had not got into the exponential increase mode yet. ............and we eeked out the tournament just days before that happened.
I have 20 students from 4 schools going to the Scholastic Chess of Indiana championships a week from Saturday.
Seems hard to imagine they will have this tournament.
This is my email to the tournament director earlier today:
Thanks Joe,
I've been writing articles/having discussions on my trading forum since January on
the Coronavirus and its taking half of my day right now when you include the emails.
I was so happy that we got our huge tournament over(we had 195 signed up and a few more cancellations than usual)
before the crap hit the fan.
I'm sorry to say that there is a pretty good chance of the tournament getting cancelled. I personally think that this is
an over reaction but with cases increasing in Indiana and in more than 1 county, it seems likely that they are
going to have to cancel all big events like this in the next several days.
Let me put it this way. What if one of the kids came to Hammond from another part of the state was infected and of course we would not know about it at the time? Touching all the same chess pieces as the kid in the round before and after but more importantly, 1,000 people in the same facility.............not for a sporting event lasting a couple of hours where they sit in the same place but for 9 hours long! And walking around mingling.............everything going back and forth between the playing hall/gym and their seats each round.
People jam packed in front of the posted pairings before each round...............coming from all parts of the state.
If I had a recipe for the spread of the Coronavirus it would be this tournament Joe.
I am so sorry to state this but I would be shocked if they allow it to happen.
At this point, there will be no mercy for blunders in government decisions. If the govt allowed for us to have the tournament and 1 infected kid infected 20 other people(which could happen) then those 20 infected people, infected 5 others and this blossomed exponentially (which could happen) and it happened at an event the was the absolute perfect environment to spread Coronavirus across the entire state of Indiana(kids/parents) coming from all parts getting together, then going back hundreds of miles(to infect their home towns)...it would be a disaster for those that allowed it to occur.
I have been trying to calm people way, way down. I'll send you some links from dozens of posts/discussions. However, these draconian measures will cause the peak to happen sooner and not as bad..........so we can get back to normal again.
It will be getting much worse before it starts getting less worse a few weeks from now.
Shutting everything down now is good for that outcome but what a stroke of disastrous luck it is for the SCI tournament.
Mike
The Scholastic Chess of Indiana State Team Championships are now officially cancelled:
"It is with great disappointment that I have to inform you that the SCI
Team Chess Championships scheduled for Hammond Morton High School on
March 21 have been cancelled. I've attached a letter from SCI President
Scott Reisinger with an explanation.
I want to thank all you coaches for you responses to my e-mail earlier
today. When I wrote that, I was hopeful that the tournament could be
salvaged. But a lot has happened since I wrote that. Several school
districts in the state have suspended classes. I just found out that
two school districts neighboring me here in Goshen have been forbidden
to participate, with about 15 teams between them. Although most of you
indicated you would still be able to attend, no doubt there will be
other districts closing down in the next week and limiting any kind of
school-related travel. The governor's edict limiting non-essential
gatherings to no more than 250 people was the final nail in the coffin.
Thanks to all of you for the effort you put into this. Thanks for
bravely hurling yourselves into the jaws of my entry form, and mostly
doing it accurately and without complaining.
I have just begun receiving checks from your schools. Those will be
returned. Those of you who paid with PayPal will receive refunds over
the next few days.
At this time, I plan to go through with the girls championship,
scheduled for March 28 in South Bend. It is on such a much smaller
scale that I think it will not pose the sort of risk that the team
championship did. Of course, we will continually monitor the situation."
I am still doing back flips(in my head) over the fact that we got our massive chess tournament in on March 7th, just barely before the doo hit the fan!
With 190+ signed up, we are the biggest chess tournament in the state of Indiana outside of the Scholastic Chess of Indiana Championship events.
Had it been scheduled for 1 week later or the Coronacrazy started 1 week earlier, I would have had $700 worth of trophies/metals (to use next year with changed name plates at a cost of over $200) and spent weeks trying to locate and refund everybody that was entered.
WHEEEEEW! That was a close call.
All of our 5 schools did a terrific job, with 90 students from just my schools.
Here is a picture of some of the members of our 8th and under champions from North Junior High that obliterated the competition:
Sent from my iPhone
I'm still blown away that we had this chess tournament, with almost 200 students and also that many parents, at times packed together as they tried to get to the pairings posted on the wall before each of 6 rounds.
It was Saturday, March 7th and just days before everything started shutting down!
March 7th was a completely different world........the old one.
Had the tournament been scheduled the weekend after that, I would be stuck with almost $1,000 worth of trophies and had to refund money to almost 200 players!
Worst of all, nobody would have benefited from the wonderful chess tournament!