- Jul 11
- 5 min read
Howdy! It’s the Chess Friends!
If you ever go to a chess tournament, you’ll know right away it’s serious business. So much concentration in one room you can feel the tension. But just because it’s a serious place doesn't mean funny things can’t happen. In this blog post, we will share some knee-slappers that happened to us at different chess tournaments.
The Man Benji:
As they say, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, but I'll share one thing. Normally, when I travel to a chess tournament, I like staying at a hotel away from the playing site. It’s just nice to get out of the building, and while walking outside, refocus my mind, get some fresh air, some movement, all that good stuff… So, one time in Las Vegas I was walking to the tournament site, reviewing some opening lines in my head, minding my own business, when suddenly, something splattered on my head. My first reaction: touch it. UGH!! It was bird poop! For a moment I panicked. Then, I groaned. Of all the places, of all the times, the bird had to poop right when I was walking there!
Then, I thought to myself, maybe it’s for good luck. Maybe it meant that I was going to win all of my games that day. So I calmed down and proceeded walking. Nevertheless, my mind was not on the opening lines anymore; it was on how to clean up! When I got to the playing site, I went straight to the bathroom, washed my hair, my face, and rubbed it with a paper towel. Just to be on the safe side, I sprayed some sanitizer on my head. You never know what that bird had been up to. Sure, I got a few funny looks, but what mattered the most was that my head felt clean and smelled like lavender. Alas, my prediction wasn’t correct. That morning, my game ended in a draw, but hey, I had a story to tell!
Another funny thing happened at a local event. The organizers assembled rows of tables and chairs in the gym, and there we played, with basketball hoops and that middle school dirty socks smell hanging in the air. Other than that, everything was business as usual. The games were already out of the opening phases when suddenly, music started blasting through the speakers. "Wake me up, before you go-go..." I guess the school's administrators forgot to turn off the bell when they left for the weekend. At first, everyone looked startled and shocked, but a second later, we all started laughing. Some were even tapping the table with the beat of the song. After it was done, we were back focusing on our games again, and then, ten minutes later, a different song blasted through the speaker! Now everybody was going crazy. Luckily, it soon ended and never repeated again, and I eventually won that game.
The Myth Sarang:
What happens in Portland stays in Portland? I think not. I was playing a big tournament with adults, and we were in the penultimate round where a lot of the prizes would be determined. A thirsty gentleman from the street came in and grabbed a couple cups of water from one of the dispensers. I guess he wasn't supposed to be there because a couple of big security guards were following him. Can you guess what happened next? The poor fellow got scared and ran into the main playing hall where all the top players were playing!
With security in hot pursuit, the fellow frantically ran down the aisle saying sorry and that he was thirsty. A tournament hall is supposed to be super quiet. It was anything but! As he ran, he was swinging his arms. Remember he had a big cup of water in each. What happens when you swing a cup of water?! The water FLIES! Some of my friends got soaked and water got on chess boards, and even my coach at the time got drenched! It was a crazy time, and we all laughed in the playing hall for a moment before cleaning up a bit and returning to our games. Lucky for our thirsty friend, we think he escaped through a backdoor in the room and got out of the hotel before security could catch him.
The Legend Vivaan:
I have been playing tournament chess for four years, and I am seven, so I have a lot of funny moments for you from K-1 events. Here are three that make me giggle. A recent one first. I was playing another kid, and I had forced mate in five, and they offered me a draw. I declined. Guess what? They asked "WHY?"! Who does that?! You're not supposed to talk during chess games except to offer a draw, call a TD, or decline a draw. Anyway, it was hilarious, and hopefully that friend learned that as awesome as it is to ask the question why, during a chess game is not the time.
Another tournament featured a kid who didn't quite understand what checkmate meant yet. Once it got into an endgame where they were up a rook, they excitedly yelled "CHECKMATE!"... EVERY SINGLE MOVE! It was so distracting but we all couldn't help laughing. Fortunately, the TD kept correcting them and tried to keep them quieter.
As DJ Khaled says, "another one"... this was maybe the best one yet... Look, we're Indian American and love Bollywood songs, but this story is wild... I was playing on board 1 in a K-1 tournament and on the board next to me, board 2, a fellow Indian American kid starts singing a Bollywood bop! I don't know if he made a great move or what, but the TD, also Indian American, immediately goes "Are we at Indian Idol or a Chess Tournament?" and the whole room went crazy laughing! A few moments later (like SpongeBob), the kid is doing it again, and half the kids in the room are joining! Luckily, the TD had a good sense of humor, sang and laughed along for a second, then put a stop to it and no one got in trouble.
You have to admit, some funny things that happen don’t seem so funny at first, and if you could go back in time, you would definitely try to revert them. But it’s all good if you can laugh about it later. In our book, we share what other funny moments you can expect at a chess tournament!
By the way, an exciting thing happened this week. Did you see the CBS National News? The Myth and The Legend were featured for some chess tournament kindness. Check it out here.
That’s all for now. Play chess and have fun! Let us know what funny things happened to you at chess tournaments!
Three Cheers, Fellow Future Master Chess Friends.
The Man Benji, The Myth Sarang, and The Legend Vivi
- Jul 4
- 3 min read
Howdy! It’s The Chess Friends!
Today, we will cover some of our favorite online chess platforms. Without further ado, let’s dive in!
ChessKid (chesskid.com)
ChessKid is the #1 chess site for kids and is the scholastic extension site for Chess.com, which we will cover later. It’s safe and free! You can also get a Gold Membership to get unlimited puzzles and videos. On ChessKid, you can play games against kids at different time controls, play bots, play online tournaments, do puzzles (there’s also a fun thing called puzzle duel, which is a 1v1 puzzle competition), take lessons, watch super funny but instructive videos, and analyze games. There are tons of great resources to help you become a better player! This website is good for beginners who want to learn the basics.
Chess (chess.com)
Chess.com is a great place to play and learn chess, with several variant options, great analysis, and lots of resources to help you learn. There are chat features and other things you might not want as a kid, but there are ways to disable those, so be sure to do that ahead of time before you use the site. For new adult players, it is fantastic.
Lichess (lichess.org)
Lichess is an awesome place to play chess, and it's absolutely free! You can create neat studies to share your games with your coaches, annotate, and analyze. There are a lot of opportunities to play games against people from all over the world, and you can join tournaments that happen every hour. It has the nicest analysis board, which we used to make illustrations with chess puzzles for our book
Chessly (chessly.com)
Chessly is a fantastic resource to help you learn chess from the #1 chess content creator in the world, Levy Rozman, aka GothamChess. It has a ton of content and is growing fast. When you’ve reached around 1200 rating, it is fantastic to help you get to 1600, and maybe even as high as 2000. The drill shuffle features and short videos are perfect for kids looking to take their chess to the next level.
Chessable (chessable.com)
Chessable is excellent for high level chess learning, with several courses to help you improve. It is ideal for players who have already reached a 1600 or so rating and are looking to rise even higher. It’s particularly great for players between 1800 and 2200 from our experience.
OpeningTree (openingtree.com)
OpeningTree is a fantastic way to prepare for opponents if you know their usernames on chess.com or LiChess, which we covered before. It’s also a good way to see your own stats and help identify some strengths and challenges in your own play using data. Realistically, preparing for opponents is a thing that happens in closed fields, which occur more when you reach a rating of around 1800.
Listudy (listudy.org)
Listudy is a goated website to learn openings, do puzzles, study endgames, and make your own studies. Blind puzzles are a nice feature, where you are given a position with notation that you have to mentally visualize and find the final tactic after the notation ends. This way you practice how to see many different lines in your head. Give it a try!
These are just a few of our favorite resources, among tons of other great websites out there. You can find places online to look for tournaments, check ratings, buy chess equipment, and more, but those largely vary region by region. Search up your local chess club or rating system and find more there, or message us where you’re from and your level, and we can try to connect you to more local resources.
Three Cheers, Fellow Future Master Chess Friends!
The Man Benji, The Myth Sarang, and The Legend Vivi
P.S. The "actual" #1 online resource for all things chess is... drumroll please...
Chess Friends Books (chessfriendsbooks.com)
You NEED to add this to your bookmarks/favorites and check back often for weekly updates and info on the release of Q & A Chess: Tournament Edition.
- Jun 26
- 3 min read
Howdy! It’s the Chess Friends!
The Man Benji is a hard-working man. After reading 3 middle grade novels, he now embarks on a journey to write about this funny graphic novel in the Geronimo Stilton Reporter series, The Gem Gang, and to share some historical facts that come along with it. Let’s get started!
Nothing exciting has been happening in Mouse Island for Geronimo Stilton to report about. So, when he gets an invitation to attend a chess match between a new chess computer and the current world champion, Gary Goudov, how can he refuse? What do you know: right after he leaves the city, a news-worthy development happens. Is it connected to the chess match? After many shenanigans, Geronimo, hidden inside the computer, is the one who ends up playing against Goudov! Curious about their game, or the gems? Read the book at your local library to find out!
This little book has some big historical parallels.
If you play chess, I bet you’ve probably heard about the earliest chess computer, the Automaton aka “The Mechanical Turk.” The Automaton was invented in 1769 by a Hungarian engineer Wolfgang von Kempelen to impress Maria Theresa, the Empress of the former Habsburg Empire.
Disguised as a robot with chess analytical skills, the Automaton had a hidden compartment from where a strong chess player operated the game.
Like a true magician, its inventor never revealed its secret. The Automaton attracted the attention of many, as it traveled around Europe for people to see and to play against it. The secret was kept even when the invention was sold to another engineer, Johann Maelzel, who was a friend of Ludwig van Beethoven and invented the metronome!
Many people got to play against the machine, including Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon (game linked here), and Philidor. If you study chess, you can probably guess that Philidor won! In 1826, the Automaton crossed the Atlantic for a North American tour. It was a sensation, but some people were skeptical that it was a robot playing, and not a human inside. But nobody was really concerned about that, because the show was spectacular, and the chess was good!
Unfortunately, the Automaton got lost in the museum fire later on. Only the chess board survived. You might ask, how do I know so many details? Well, it's all thanks to the legendary chess coach FM Sunil Weeramantry and his friends, and their awesome chess book that’s packed with interesting historical facts like that!
Going back to our featured Geronimo Stilton graphic novel, another thing the Gem Gang reminded me was the matches between GM Gary Kasparov and a supercomputer Deep Blue. We will not go deep into that (get it?), because a book about these events, Kasparov vs. Deep Blue, co-written by none other than GM Maurice Ashley himself, will be out next year! His co-author is Newbery Honor author Steve Sheinkin and it is illustrated by Thien Pham. It's going to be in the graphic novel format!!! What fun!
We are looking forward to that one for sure!
That’s all for now, Fellow Future Master Chess Friends. Learn history and play chess!
The Man Benji, the Myth Sarang, and the Legend Vivi