FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Lapu-Lapu City, Mactan – 16 November 2009 – Deaf chess players from two local public schools fought it out over the board in the first Mactan Deaf Open Scholastic Chess Tournament held this past Saturday, 14 November, at Lapu-Lapu City Central Elementary School (LLCCES). Forty-seven players registered for the four-round Swiss G/30 tournament from LLCCES and Mandaue High School, with a field of thirty-one actually competing for trophies, cash prizes and bragging rights.

After four rounds of competitive play, an exciting blitz playoff occurred for the first and second place trophies and a seven-way tie-break blitz for third place.

Gerald Ybanez, from LLCCES took First Place honors, a trophy and P300, ending the tournament with an unofficial tournament rating of 1550. Matthew Venzeill G. Manayon, in his first year at Mandaue High School, took Second Place, a trophy and P200, with a tournament day rating of 1500. A great birthday present for Matt, who turned 17 years old on Saturday.

Jigger B. Bering won Third Place in a nerve-wracking checkmate over Jerome Caadan in the final blitz game that saw Jigger not realizing that his opponent had lost on time. Arthur D. Diongson, a patient and focused player with 3 wins and 1 loss for the tournament, had the highest unofficial rating of 1585, but lost in the first round of the blitz tie-break to Elmundo R. Almogia.

“It was very well organized,” commented Mr. Max Igot, Teacher at Mandaue Deaf High School.

The Mactan Deaf Open Scholastic Chess Tournament is to be an annual event coinciding with National Deaf Awareness Week and featuring Deaf Scholastic Teams from the Cebu-metro area. This year’s tournament was hosted by Lapu-Lapu City Central Elementary School and the LLCCES Roaring Rooks Chess Club, a Deaf Chess Club. It was organized and directed by Chessofia™, a private, non-profit volunteer ministry dedicated to teaching life-skills and values education through Chess instruction and providing God-honoring mentoring to at-risk Deaf and Hearing people through Chess playing fellowship.

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[ Press release (minus contact info) I sent today via e-mail (PDF) to Mr. Frank "Chessmoso" Pestano who writes the weekly Chess column for the Cebu Sun-Star daily newspaper. Interesting to note that Lapu-Lapu City had a Chess tournament the same day as ours, the Lapu-Lapu Fiesta tournament. We had no idea of the event until today. I didn't get the Friday Sun-Star last week, which apparently had the information for the tournament. Bigger prize fund, but then our tournament was free-of-charge. The Fiesta tourney cost P150 to enter, which would be drastically out of the Deaf's league. ALSO interesting to note that one of Lapu's best youth players, Allan Pason, who was scheduled to play the Fiesta, played in our school-wide tournament last Wednesday and won first prize. ]

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OKAY, here’s the promised blogspot on what happened last week. Wednesday, we held the LLCCES Deaf Awareness Week Open Tournament… deaf and hearing played each other… we had two sections – Varsity and Reserve… 16 players in Varsity and 29 players in Reserve sections respectively. ALLAN R. PASON, Lapu-Lapu’s youth chess champion player from Grade 6, won the Varsity section, with Jethro Elijah F. Bolima and Sheila B. Regulacion coming in 2nd and 3rd respectively. Reserve section winners, saw Macky Ledesma come out on top in 1st place and Mark Joseph Laroa and Jeric Remulta – both Deaf – winning second and third places.

We had one hearing player’s mother helping her son during a game… we warned the first time, then she did it again and we had to give the poor fellow a forfeit loss (Rule 20E1). “Wow,” you might say, “a bit harsh.” True, I could have let them replay the game according to the rules which give the TD discretion… but cheating and taking short-cuts is a very big ticket here in the Visayas and since Chess teaches that ‘every move has a consequence’ it would be a disservice to both the player and their parent (and to all the players) if we simply shrugged it off and made provision for their bad character and bad choice. We learned a lot about the gallery and their discipline (or lack of as it turned out) which helped us set up the playing room for the Saturday tournament.

Do you remember that scene in “Searching For Bobby Fischer“? Dan Hedaya plays the Tournament Director and has “The Talk” with the parents and then finally had to lock them in the basement locker room? I thought that was funny, until I saw what happens myself as a TD. Hilarious scene in the movie, but not funny in reality, lemme tellya. Nothing harder to do than give a forfeit to a kid whose parent lacks any self-control.

Overall, it was a fine tournament and we learned a lot for future tournaments. There was a brown-out power failure during the last round which made things interesting, but we managed. The biggest problem we had for both tournaments was starting on-time. Saturday, I was actually in-process of withdrawing players in order to pair the few who were there on-time, when nearly the rest of the players showed up. I got a little hot under the collar and we didn’t actually start the first round until nearly 11:10. I held up a signed registration form and told them they’d signed their name to the form showing they understood what time the tournament began, then I asked them what would happen if they showed up to a job nearly an hour late, that they would be fired, that seemed to get across the importance of arriving on-time. Also, talking with Mindy – my wife and Assistant TD par excellence – we noticed that when we put up the first round standings list, they all seemed to realize that this was a real deal. And reflecting on the tournament I’d seen this past summer, I understood that they thought coming in to the tournament that it was just a gathering of people playing chess and that they could arrive whenever since it wasn’t a big deal. They realized by the fourth round, that it was a big deal and I’m fairly certain that next tournament, we’ll see a more motivated group of Deaf players.

I’d planned to have tournament shirts available, but had serious troubles making the screens for the job. Nothing seemed to work and there was quite a bit of effort just get all the materials together. Still don’t have the shirts, but have a great design! I’ve e-mailed my master sign-maker Brother-In-Law to help me figure out what to do to correct it and then we’ll get the shirts done… but ‘yikes!’ is all I have to say about the efforts to get those shirts made!

Also, we made a hot lunch on-site for all the players. Two players refused to eat it, but wanted to take any food they could get back home to their mothers… we had plenty of food for both they and their mothers, but we could not convince either one to eat more than a few spoonfuls. When and if we can get our The Cornerstone™ Chess Clubs rolling, we’d like to be able to make it a place where players (and immediate family?) can eat a solid, nutritional meal for free.

It was a busy and exhausting week, but a great week. We look forward to holding more tournaments in the months ahead and will definitely be holding a Deafie Tournament at least prior to the next Shell Youth Active Tournament next Summer. The main prize will be the top five finishers getting paid registration to the Shell Tournament which I will personally see to it that their registrations get turned in (last year, we turned in five registrations, but the person responsible for turning them in, turned in only the hearing players and then told us that he’d not turned in any registrations because there were “not enough” players from the school to turn in. Funny, because we have three applications from our Wednesday tournament that state that at least three players attended the Shell tournament this past summer from LLCCES… but that’s how it goes in a land that, as a whole, do not value the Deaf. But then that’s why God brought us here, to show the Deaf that He cares for and loves them greatly.)

Receiving nine more registrations from hearing students today… makes 21 pre-registered altogether for tomorrow’s tournament.

Running mock tournament with actual names to input the players now and to get familiar with all the buttons and whistles once again.

UPDATE… it’s 2233 and about ready to call it a day. We received 33 pre-registrations for the school-wide tournament tomorrow. Sixteen boards and also hoping to get some teachers to play in the Booster section… long-shot, but have it set-up in case. We’ll be setting up a table for free Gospel books to be given away and hoping to get some of the hearing kids interested in attending Chess Club on Saturdays. After tomorrow, we’ll be preparing for Saturday… have a few dozen t-shirts to make by Friday and lots of work ahead. Time to hit the hay and get some sleep. Thanks for all your prayers.

Received 12 registration forms from the hearing students so far who will play at the School tournament on the 11th. Since there is no rating system here and pairings need to be as equal as can be, I asked a question about the names of pieces to get a rudimentary idea… ten got it right with one of those having crossed out a selection.

Looks like we’ll have more hearing students than deaf students playing, but in the RPI, you just never know what will be in your box of chocolates (apologies to Forrest Gump).

Last Wednesday, I worked with the Deaf students on scorekeeping and gave them some homework. Yesterday, we went over one of the papers (a 15 move partial game). I had a coterie of students sitting around the board watching and learning. After all this time, looks like I’ve hit on a method that works far better than a classroom-type setting for these students. It fits my style of mentoring and discipling a lot better, but have been reluctant to do it, since using it with the hearing has resulted previously with most not focusing and wandering off. The Deaf students actually clustered around – girls included (which is always fantastic to see, especially here).

I have an interesting aside here… on Wednesday, when reviewing how to keep score and notate moves, one of the students was having difficulty. He’s 21 (yes, in elementary school, not uncommon here… last year had a 29 year old) and still learning his ABC’s… he’s a very competitive and smart young man and I was greatly encouraged to see him stick with it to get the letters and to understand the process of scoring. But I’d never considered that learning Chess and Chess scoring was a way for learners to get their ABC’s… another benefit of Chess, eh? (smile) Praise God!

I’ll be travelling this weekend, but hopefully will be able to run a full mock tournament including the actual names of players on Tuesday to get truly familiar with SwissSys. The big concern is the Saturday 14th Tournament… mixed signals on whether the Deaf students from the highschool will show, but they have the applications nonetheless.

Saturday, 14 November, we will be organizing and directing the Second Annual Deaf Awareness Week tournament. This year we will have Deaf students from at least two, possibly three, schools participating. We only have boards for 42 players, so we will be looking to see how many will play.

It will be a 4-round, Swiss, G/30 with a G/5 tiebreak. We’re serving lunch to the players and giving all participants a small gift. Trophies for 1st and 2nd place and a small cash prize. Also, the Friday before, we are holding a LLCES-school-only tournament with both Deaf and Hearing kids (there is a whole 10 posts just on this aspect of Chessofia™, but I’ll have to hold off for awhile [smile]). It’s great for the kids, but it’ll also help me work out any issues with running the tournament using the computer.

This will be our first tournament using SwissSys tournament software and not all done by hand as in the past. It was time to purchase a software tool as we will be holding multiple tournaments a year as we expand into the Churches. Tournaments are great for lots of reasons and the software will pay for itself quickly in time saved and the ability to organize better. I’m excited to use the software and in mock runs, it’s almost more fun to me than a video game (I’m partial to ATC games when I have hours to kill, which is truly never. It’s been at least 6 years since I ‘worked’ an ARTCC or landed a plane at O’Hare!).

Getting this site up and running has been good to do. Website building was my trade before being called to Missions over 9 years ago and it always is a focusing excercise for me concerning the content.

Next on the agenda is to get some experiential notes up here to let all of you know what God is doing through Chessofia™ and what is happening to us personally as we delve deeper into the realm of God’s Kingdom and Chess and ministering to those in front of us and OTB (smile). If you’re interested, here is our post concerning taking the kids to the Shell® Active Youth tournament, “Observers of Chaos…”

Incidentally, you may have noticed the Latin for the site headings. We homeschool our kids and I’m the Latin & Greek teacher. Since we’re starting with Latin, I’m having fun with it and it makes a site a bit different than the norm, eh? (ha).

“In fides et scacci, agnitio.” Which translates to “In Faith and Chess, Knowledge.”

If you need to see what we’re about, see the category What Is Chessofia™? or click on “Sui Generis” at top OH, INCIDENTALLY, I can’t seem to turn on the Comments, so if you have a question or query, please go to the Cont@ct page above and send me an e-mail. Also, the link list at right is admittedly ecletic, but I use many of these sites and it’s just easier when online to come here and click than to mess with the file tree in the bookmarks.