Snow is on the ground and kids are back in school. It can only be a sign of one thing -- a new year has arrived. It’s 2024, and the first of the first of the ICA tournaments for Livingston is complete.
I’d like to do something a bit different today by focusing this report on one quad. Specifically, one unusual young man whose tournament experience is worthy of note. All of the kids at today’s tournament were terrific, but I want to single out quad one in particular for being special in ways you’ll shortly understand.
Quad one consisted of four players…
Andrew Goldfarb (1342)
Dylan Rosa (1143)
Ruben Quintans (1002 P4)
Vivaan Sharda (972 P14)
As I’ve explained in past reports, new players to chess received a provisional rating based on a certain number of games. A provisional rating is denoted by P#, where # is the number of games. The lower the P value, the more the player’s rating tends to bounce around are the algorithm tries to assess the player’s true level of skill. It’s not at all uncommon for a new player to do well in their first tournament, only to be temporarily bumped above their real skill level at their second tournament. They usually lose badly and their rating falls down to a more appropriate level. I’ve seen this story play out many times.
Ruben is one such player who did well at his first tournament. He shot up a thousand points after just four games, one of the highest jumps I’ve ever seen. What made this particularly impressive was his age -- Ruben is just five years old and is a kindergarten student. The ICA tournaments in Livingston aren’t a national-level event by any means, but for him to be playing in the top quad is a truly unusual occurrence. Probability suggested he would do poorly and would have a rough time of it. I didn’t ask the other players their age, but they looked between 10 and 15 years old. The smallest of them was about twice Ruben’s age and size.
Whenever we have a heavy age discrepancy I always make a point of keeping an eye on the younger player. Not that any of our older players behave poorly around younger players, but the difference in maturity can lead to moments when the older player tries to force through their resolution to a dispute based on their greater understanding of the rules. For example, a touch-move issue. Not to mention it’s always a good idea to keep a close eye on the youngest players in a tournament. So I made a point of peeking in at Ruben often.
Round one began. Ruben played Vivaan, the lowest rated player in the group. Dylan and Andrew played each other. I was busy running the tournament so I paid little attention to the specifics of their games, but Andrew ultimately won over Dylan while Vivaan beat Ruben.
Round two began. By now the rest of the tournament was beginning to wind down. Any quad with an average of 1000 rating points or higher has a slower time control. G45 instead of G30. That change, combined with the general higher level of patience among higher-rated players, meant they were in the middle of their second game by the time almost the entire rest of the tournament was done.
Andrew won against Vivaan in short order, while Ruben and Dylan played the mother of all long games. It’s difficult for me to explain how epic this was.
The shortest possible game in chess is two moves - Fool’s Mate, so-called because it’s a terrible opening and you have to be a fool to lose that way.
The shortest common checkmate in chess is four moves - Scholar’s mate. It’s popular among the youngest players and is taught to them for the sole reason of immediately being able to teach them how to defend themselves against it. Some kids fall in love with the opening and play it to a skill level of 400 or so, after which it no longer works (and is actually a poor opening).
A short game of chess might be 10 moves. A long game is around 60-70 moves.
Dylan and Ruben duked it out for a whopping 156 moves.
A non-player pulled me aside to say that they’re headed towards a “50 move rule” situation, and I might want to start counting moves. So I headed in, grabbed some scratch paper, and started counting.
The 50 move rule is this: A game warrants a draw if it bogs down due to a lack of progression. This is defined as each player moving 50 consecutive moves without 1) advancing a pawn, or 2) taking a piece. The players have to ask the director to either count the moves or to go over their scoresheet. If a tournament director intervenes on their own, the threshold increases to 75 moves. This is an extremely high threshold -- we’re talking 150 moves in a game with virtually nothing significant happening. The players usually declare it a draw long before that happens.
This often coincides with another rule - Triple Occurence of a Position. Meaning if the players keep repeating the same board state on the same person’s turn (say, by moving two pieces back and forth), it warrants a draw on the third occurrence. If the player does not ask the tournament director to intervene, this rises to five occurrences for me to intervene on my own.
When I arrived, the board looked something like this.
(White: Ruben; Black: Dylan)
Ruben was continually checking Dylan. Dylan would move his king, and Ruben would move to check him again. They went on for more than 30 moves (15 each) like this, with me recording both the position of the Black King and White Queen. As long as they didn’t move any other pieces, my notes would reveal when they met either threshold to intervene. (Or to declare a draw if they asked me to do so.)
Ruben had one other edge -- Dylan was down to two minutes on the clock, while Ruben had 18 minutes left. He had plenty of time to think about the optimal place to move his queen while Ruben was playing Blitz-style (ie; fast moves) to avoid his time unduly dropping.
And then Ruben had it. An opportunity to achieve a draw
I don’t remember the exact state, but it was something like this.
.
Black moved either a2 or b2; it doesn’t matter which. Ruben had his moment. All he had to do was to take the pawn and he’d have the draw. Doing so sets up a King and Queen vs. King and Queen outcome which is always drawn unless 1) queen can be taken in one move after checking the king, or 2) a player blunders.
This was one of those moments where life experience comes in handy, and at five years old Ruben didn’t have it. He opted to continue checking the king. Shortly thereafter the queen was able to leave the corner to block the check. Which in turn led soon to a moment where Ruben no longer had a move which would eternally check the king. The pawn begin advancing, the 50 (75) move count was cleared, and the queen was now able to protect the pawn.
I’m told that it’s still possible for a King and Queen to draw against a King and two Queens, but Ruben either didn’t know how or wasn’t able to pull it off. Black traded queens not long after, and his king and remaining queen was able to checkmate Ruben shortly thereafter.
It was a loss for Ruben and yet I couldn’t help but to find it a victory of sorts. The little guy was five years old and playing way above his maturity level. His loss was understandable. He lacks some of the experience and lessons that his contemporaries had. He’ll get those lessons over the next few years and will be a beast of an opponent at the chessboard.
And kudos to Ruben for not losing his cool during this whole ordeal. He’d spent several hours at a chessboard that day and wasn’t at all impatient or bored or unhappy. I’ve seen kids older than him go completely to pieces over far less.
Then it was time for the final game - Dylan vs. Vivaan and Ruben vs. Andrew. Vivaan won his game and eagerly watched the Ruben-Andrew battle. If Andrew won he’d win first place and all $60. But if Ruben won then Vivaan and Andrew would split the cash prize.
Andrew launched a heavy attack at Ruben. It looked like it would succeed… until it didn’t. Ruben sacrificed a queen in exchange for material and the attack turned into a rout. I peeked in at the game and saw it was Andrew’s King, Queen, and three Pawns vs. Ruben’s King, Rook, two Bishops, and a Knight. Needless to say, the queen fell not long after in exchange for the rook. The rest was just Ruben mopping up. Andrew was a very good sport losing to a kid one-third his size. He shook Ruben’s hands and gave me a wistful look that said it all -- you can’t win them all.
And so Quad one came to a finish. Vivaan and Andrew split first prize with $30 each… and Ruben woke up Monday morning to learn that he’d gained a handful of rating points along with the knowledge that his 1000-ish rating is well deserved.
We’ll be back on February 4 for another tournament. I look forward to seeing you all then. In the meantime, congrats to Ruben, Andrew, Dylan, and Vivaan for a quad well played. And to all of the other players who participated.
--Stephen Lorimor
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