Playing tournaments online has some advantages for the members of our WFC Chess club.

The online platform has meant that we have been able to play against schools, not only from throughout Victoria, but interstate as well. This is a real opportunity for us because, under normal circumstances, only the top teams from each state get to do this. It has been a great experience to play against new people, learning new skills and moves along the way.

On Monday 25 May, four of the team (including myself) went online for the Ballarat Interschool Tournament, our second Online Interschool Chess event.

After the first competition, we were all used to the online system, but technical difficulties unexpectedly pushed the start back an hour. That didn’t stop us though, as we worked together to make sure we were ready for when things started moving.

After a quick introduction and reminder of the way the day would go – we played seven matches against people from other schools, each round playing someone doing about as well as us – we were ready for our first games. We talked to each other all day and created a positive atmosphere, enjoying the wins while learning from the losses. The seven games were over in no time at all, helped by the fact that there were only 24 people participating.

Going into the last round, we were a point or two behind the leaders. The winning team would earn spots in the State finals later in the year. With two wins and one loss going in to the last round, our last teammate sat with scores tied – ready for one player to take the win and his team to State. Unfortunately, we lost, finishing second behind St Patrick’s College (Ballarat).

On Friday 29 May, four Year 9 students took part in another tournament, the Hobart (Interschool) Tournament, against seven schools from Tasmania and four from Victoria. The boys did a good job against some tough opposition, with Alex Boscariol coming out as our top player. This was another great chess tournament to take part in and learn from.

A massive thank you to Ms Powling for organising our place in the competition, providing us with resources to continue to practice chess while Chess club cannot meet, and keeping us up-to-date while the technical difficulties persisted.

If you want to participate in chess this year, there will be more online competitions later in the year, including multiple ACC competitions. Websites such as https://www.chess.com/ and https://lichess.org/ are available 24/7 for you to play against other people or challenge your friends to help you improve your skills.

Jayden Bardrick, Chess Captain