Saturday, April 8, members of the MSMS chess team, seniors Braeden Foldenauer, and Andy Zhao, and juniors Spencer Bolhuis, William Johnson, Gary Nguyen, and Daniel Smothers attended the Mississippi Scholastic Chess Association statewide team tournament in Starkville. It was their first tournament, but after five rounds, the MSMS chess team won first place.

Foldenauer says that the chess team did much better than he had anticipated, considering the school had not been to a team tournament since 2006. “It was awesome, really incredible. I definitely did not go in confident that we were going to win much . . . to go in as a first time playing together in over a decade, [I] definitely did not expect a victory.” Foldenauer especially enjoyed the experience because he had missed competing in chess tournaments since coming to MSMS.

This was Zhao’s second time playing competitively in a tournament since middle school. He said, “My most tense games are the ones on which I’m running low on time. In a particularly memorable match, I won with around thirty seconds on the clock.”

He was also excited about the team’s success. “It was gratifying to see our team win the first place trophy in our first team tournament. The only other thing that I would have wished for is a longer lunch break,” Zhao said.

The team’s sponsor, Dr. Curtis, described the process of the chess tournament. “There are five rounds where all the players play five games, and they tabulate and figure out the team scores . . . there’s a rankings system, and you have what is called and elo number”. The elo number assigned to each player dictates how many points a player earns for beating them. Beating a less experienced player would yield less points than than winning against a more experienced opponent.

“And so, you wind up adding all of this up. We took six players and you count your top four, so at the end of the day, our top four players added up and had the highest score of anybody there. That’s why we won the tournament,” Curtis explained.