Chess Club in Full Swing
In the Autumn term, 64 players competed in the Tiny Tournament – a knockout tournament played on a tiny 5×5 chess board. Mr Tipler and Yusuf Shah reached the semi-finals but were knocked out by Soham Gaikwad and Dexter Cheetham, respectively. After some dedicated study of 5×5 strategies, Dexter secured overall victory and was awarded a tiny trophy. Congratulations, Dexter!
On Thursday 5 February, HGS travelled over to Westborough High School for our chess clubs to compete against each other. Both teams showed good proficiency in chess, but HGS won the vast majority of games in the first two rapid rounds. Interestingly, in the final blitz round where each player had only 5 minutes on the clock, both teams seemed evenly matched and won roughly the same number of games. Take from that what you will! Well done to Dexter Cheetham, Hamza Ali Ali, Mohammad Bin Gulzar, Vedant Upasani, Mudra Bharade, Pratham Khanna, Aaradhya Rane, Soham Gaikwad, Reyansh Saxena, Muhammed Bhayat, Isaac Wong, Sree Harsha Veerepalli, Ethan Khush Barai and Nirvaan Mahajan – You all represented HGS brilliantly. Some of the HGS players were new to chess competitions, so this was hopefully a nice introduction for them.
A lot of players come to Chess Club sessions to play a few casual games, but there is a growing number of students taking chess more seriously by studying openings and tactics as well as regularly completing puzzles and drills. To support students with their development in chess, Chess Club now has a small collection of books for students to use and there has been some discussion around masterclass sessions. To keep up to date with Chess Club tournaments, events and whatnot, students can join the Microsoft Team page with code zefc3k6.