Day two of the 2010 CalChess Scholastic Chess Championships began with a rather contentious coaches meeting. As usual, all the colorful personalities and huge egos resulted in a very heated discussion. The use of electronic devices to keep score and the ability to have unrated players play in the junior varsity sections were the most hotly debated topics. The solutions should be to allow any score keeping method that is allowed by the USCF and also allow schools to move players up from unrated categories into junior varsity sections as long as it is not done so last minute that it puts additional strain on the tournament directing staff. Sadly, coaches were unable to agree on these solutions. Based on my previous experiences at the Calchess Scholastic Chess Championships, even if there had been total agreement at the coaches meeting it would not guarantee, in any way, that whoever happens to run the next Calchess Scholastic Chess Championships would have implemented the changes.
Mission San Jose Elementary School continued to dominate the CalChess State Championships winning both the k-3 and k-5 varsity sections. Had their been a team award for kindergarden we would have also won that. In the near future I will post detailed information on our top players performances as well as games and pictures from the CalChess State Scholastic Chess Championship.
I advised members of the CalChess board that it would benefit the Northern California scholastic chess community if we could better define and eliminate the superfluous championship events that seem to plague Northern California and water down the competition at the real CalChess Scholastic State Championships. This year there were four different state/regional championship events. I feel there should only be two, the CalChess Grade Level Championship in the fall and the CalChess State Scholastic Chess Championships in the Spring. Having the extra tournaments tends to confuse the general public and reduces the accomplishments of the real state champions. Why do we have so many Scholastic Chess Championships anyhow? Whether it is greed, ego, or ineptness the results are the same. The CalChess Scholastic Chess Championship is smaller and our state champions accomplishments are being cheapened.
Please remember to check the Torres Chess and Music Academy;s web page for detailed information on how young chess players can attend our many camps and classes this summer. The Torres Chess and Music Academy’s web page is http://www.ChessandMusic.com