Understanding there is no thrill of victory without the agony of defeat is difficult for a child who believes they should win all the time. Players, even the youngest ones, often push themselves hard to win. A loss can be demoralizing and set them back weeks or months in their self-confidence. My solution to soothing these life lessons is to make tournaments fun. Fun always makes life lessons easier to learn. It’s hard to be upset when you’re smiling and laughing.
Last year at an ICA chess camp one of the kids drew a picture of me saying “no fun allowed”. This was a joke between the younger kids and myself. I’d pretend to give them stern warnings that no fun was allowed, and they’d repeat back that fun was allowed. I wanted them to think of chess culture as being fun. Pretending to be mean was meant to make them laugh and be determined to have fun.
I occasionally adopt this character at chess tournaments and jokingly scold the younger children for having fun. I do want them to take chess seriously, but I also want them to enjoy themselves. Who wants to spend years on a hobby or career that is never fun?
Another of my jokes: some of the kids call me Uncle Bob. I’m not quite sure how or where that nickname came from, but they find it amusing so I encourage it. Inevitably someone asks me why others are calling me Uncle Bob. They’re welcome to call me that as well, and so the name spreads.
Yet another one: my personal chess clocks all say “Stolen from Stephen Lorimor” on the back. That always gets some amused questions from the kids.
I always make a point of slipping fun moments into tournaments when the kids least expect it. Like this last Sunday, when my husband (also a tournament director) helped out with the event. He used to be a professional illustrator so he added doodles to the bottom of each quad’s score sheet.
I’ve got a host of other jokes as well, mostly for the younger kids. The older kids roll their eyes at my sense of humor, but the young’uns love it. For example, I tell kids who win money, “did you know the rules of chess specifically say you can spend your prize winnings on ice cream?” I have a long list of such jokes.
Fun is also a way of dealing with the unpredictable. Do-Re-Mi has two small bathrooms. The light was malfunctioning in one of the rooms, giving it a dimly-lit strobe effect that could be disturbing to some people. So when I announced the issue to the kids, I told them they were welcome to use either bathroom, but one of them might look like a haunted house. The kids laughed and I have no idea many tried it out just to see what it was like.
Of course some kids win prizes and others don’t. The winners usually have a bit more fun than the others. So allow me to congratulate those who won this week’s quads:
Quad 1 - Samvel Hovsepyan and Benjamin Gorenburg (tie)
Quad 2 - Marcel Jose Navas
Quad 3 - Siddhanth Nidhin
Quad 4 - Alexander Maslov
Quad 5 - Ridhima Koya
Quad 6 - Max Haoran Zhao
Quad 7 - Daniel Khoroshevski
We’ll be back in Livingston on April 14 with our next scholastic (Swiss-style) tournament. On behalf of everyone at ICA and Do-Re-Mi we hope to see you there!
Congratulations to Livingston High School for winning last week’s New Jersey State Championship! At the most recent ICA Show, Artem, one of our coaches and TDs and a member of the winning team, joined us to discuss his match. You can rewatch below!
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