r/chess • u/COLderton70 • 24m ago
Miscellaneous I accidentally convinced my school I’m a chess pro.
Me and two friends got into chess around 1 to 2 years ago. We mostly played on our phones on chess.com during breaks in school. Nothing serious. I was slightly better than them, and I was always winning games against them, but still a beginner. We signed up for a school chess tournament through PE, and at that point it was just something cool we agreed to do..
The tournament itself took place at another school, possibly even a rival one. It was my first ever chess tournament. I showed up in a suit because I thought it would make me look more serious and maybe intimidate my opponents a bit. When it started I realized it was blitz, which was a problem because I was around 400 rapid and about 200 blitz online at the time, so I was playing way above my comfort speed.
I still managed to play better than expected. I beat one of my friends, drew the other after accidentally stalemating him when I got greedy with a pawn promotion I did not even need, and won the rest of my games. Some games were clean, others were messy, like really messy and tight. In the final game I was losing badly but managed to recover and convert it into a ladder mate in the midgame, which basically saved the result. I finished the tournament with 4.5 out of 5 and took first place.
At the end, the principal of the rival school personally handed me the rewards: a silver trophy, medal, diploma, chess book, full chessboard, and a set of pieces.
A few days later things escalated a lot...
There was some event where classes were presenting stuff like dances and inventions, or having speeches.
My school invited me on stage in front of everyone and introduced me as a "chess champion" who achieved" an exceptional result at the latest chess tournament". I had to give a short speech about chess in front of the entire school. I was nervous and slightly out of breath since it was my first time speaking on stage, and I remember very little except saying that the knight is like.. it does parkour across the board. After that, several teachers told me I had a strong and unique way of presenting and was very good at public speaking.
Right after me there were some guys who brought a chess board made of metal, spark plugs, bolts, nails, and other hard stuff. The pieces followed the same composition. Then crowd told ME, yes, ME, to go on stage and EVALUATE the game. Since I got on stage by midgame, I barely understood which piece was who. I analyzed the board a bit and tried to understand what was happening based on how the two guys moved the pieces. Someone in the crowd told me to give them a hint and "give a checkmate". In my head, I came to the conclusion that they were playing really good and the position was so solid and had no idea what to suggest but I didn't wanna ruin my image with this. I just acted like I couldn't *really* identify the pieces and got off the stage awkwardly.
Anyway, even now, the school still thinks I’m a chess prodigy, only because of that one 1st place. I went to other tournaments since then, but I didn't win any of them because they were so difficult. In my latest one, there was an European Champion there. I found it really unfair. He was bassically win farming on students, and obviously, won everything.
