MSMS hosted its first on-campus chess tournament on Oct. 15. The tournament had a standard and blitz division. In the standard division, players had 25 minutes each to move their pieces with a five second delay between moves. In blitz, they had five minutes each to move their pieces with no delay. Peter Nguyen, a junior, won the standard division while Gary Nguyen, a senior, won the blitz division.

“I wasn’t really expecting to win, but it was really fun,” stated champion Peter Nguyen. Peter took home the championship in his first tournament, while attending just for fun.

The MSMS Chess Club hosted this tournament with the leadership of club president Gary Nguyen and sponsor Scott Curtis, an MSMS English teacher. The tournament had issues with attracting players to compete.

“I had a bit of trouble convincing players from other local schools to come out and participate. A student from Starkville High School did show, however, and was excited to join us for the tournament. Recruiting our own students to play in the event also proved to be a challenge, but in the end, the event was successful with thirteen players in the main tournament and eight in the blitz tournament,” Gary Nguyen said.

The tournament proved to be an educating experience for many players. “I felt very unprepared before the tournament, but by the end of the tournament, I felt prepared for an actual tournament with peers at my skill level,” stated Loveish Sarolia, a junior. He plans on competing in more chess competitions so hopefully he can be “a potential contender for an actual competition.”

The MSMS Chess Club plans to host many more tournaments in the year.  “We’re striving to be more inclusive by reaching out to any local schools that we can regardless of grade level and inviting them to all our events. Hopefully, our future tournaments will see more participation and will incorporate different variation that might make them more fun, like a team tournament or a BugHouse Blitz.