CHESS MATE- CHESS TOURNAMENT 2015

Written by Romesa Hassan.

Chess Tournament? Chess Tournament.

When Waleed Bin Khalid was asked as to why he conducted this competition 'alongside Imad'. This was his reply:

1.       Last year The Buddy Support Society wasn’t able to do it.

2.      Imad begged me to arrange it.

3.      I was bored.

4.      Imad and I want world dominance.

...The first two reasons, well okay. Even the third one is quite justifiable but, uhm, yeah Waleed I hardly doubt that this chess tournament is going help you and Imad achieve world dominance. Just saying. To be very honest when I first saw the post about this tournament on Facebook I laughed out loud, *sorry you two* but to my utter surprise many people ended up participating! Well I guess enough with my rambling and let’s get down to every petty detail about this tournament, that lasted for a whole three weeks. I will take this moment to point out that despite the fact that this tournament lasted for three weeks the “management” (mainly Imad and Waleed. No actually, just Imad and Waleed) did not arrange for any photographers. *Tch tch tch* Very poor management skills guys.

Imad Aleem was the chief organizer and Waleed Bin Khalid acted in the capacity of President Buddy Support Society. The tournament, which initially included twenty eight participants kicked off with twenty six on the 11^th of February . Out of the twenty six participants, only three of were girls, namely Sara Sadiq, who withdrew as fast as Taylor Swift breaks up with her boyfriends and comes up with a new hit single, Saira Rizvi and Abeer Lakhani. Yup you can just see the gender stereotype playing out right there despite Imad’s “persuasive” announcement which I quote was as follows, “ This tournament is open for both boys and girls so that we can attract all the feminists in chapter"  Sources tell me that Saira Rizvi was given an easy opponent just so that she’d progress to the next round, unfortunately she didn’t, much to Imad’s dismay.

The matches were arranged with respect to every participant’s free periods and were conducted in the Resource Room. The official match time was forty minutes. Round One consisted of thirteen matches, Round Two seven, Quarter Final eight, Semi finals two, *wow no wonder the tournament lasted for three weeks* and then finally the Final! Each opponent was made to sign a form to ensure fairness. The matches were supervised by arbiters namely, Imad, Ahmad Shahid and Waleed. In the first round quite a few matches ended within two minutes. Clearly some of the participants were under a lot of stress. At one occasion, Taha Ansari took out an opponent’s chess piece using the opponent’s own piece. *Much Wow* A lot of spectators turned out to watch the matches, I being one of them. But I was usually kicked out or silenced because apparently,I have a ‘voice’ and I get ‘overexcited’. Sheeeshhh, it’s not a crime to be loud, okay? *okay.* I must say though, that the matches were pretty intense and were fun to watch. Finally after many well contested matches the Final was contested. Muhammad Arsalan and Abdullah Abdul Ghani were the two finalists. The Resource Room was filled with spectators and the match was also shown on a projector.

Battle of the...the, uh, idk, whatever chess term there is for this situation...

In end Muhammad Arsalan triumphed and the three week long tournament finally came to an end.

PS: The effort of Imad and Waleed is highly commendable because the whole tournament was extremely well managed. *Cheers*