Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Chess tournaments

My son administered stalemate, per my husband...messed up his endgame a little. By the way, the parents were allowed to be in the room but were not close enough to be in talking range. My husband was able to see the games somewhat, though not always all that well.

Oh, and Bostonian, because of your suggestion we trained him in defense against Scholar's Mate the day before the tournament. Sure enough, one of his opponents tried it on him, but he successfully defended against it. He was quite pleased with himself!

Based on this and the fact that your son beat the players in his section with ease, he may be ready to play "up" with older players.

Looking at the results, he was assigned to low-ranked K/1 players, presumably because he was unranked? The kids he beat are pretty far down in the overall standings. I am guessing that when he plays a few more tournaments and gets a ranking he will be assigned to harder players.

Most American chess tournaments are run according to the "Swiss system" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss-system_tournament , in which players who have won the same number of games in the tournament so far are paired against each other. The section you play in and how you do in a tournament determines the quality of your opponents more than your rating does.

Hmm--the results say Swiss System but it does not appears that DS played kids who won the same # of games as he had.

That's great ultramarina.

I just led our elementary school's first ever chess tournament and we had 16 kids in the K-1 division. A Kindergartener won all five matches to take first in the division. My son started playing chess as a K and I highly recommend it -- I wish I had found beginner tournaments for him earlier. All the kids love the ability to play chess with other kids all day long!

Just wanted to share that my six yr old son is now in the Top 100 Chess players in the US for ages 7 & under! He is currently #82, but this ranking is based on his USCF rating from last month. His rating has since gone up significantly, so he will probably remain on the list and go up in ranking next month. He was pretty excited.

That's great Tor'sMama. He is quite strong for age 6.