I began organizing tournaments, quads in particular, one month ago. So far Puddletown Chess has held two quads. There are things I learned and things I should learn.
The surprising lesson as organizers was that the pizza parlor was working out as a place to hold tournaments. A pizza parlor is an unusual place to hold serious chess tournaments, but we made it work both times with great success. There were barely any distractions for a handful of reasons: the friendly management team turned off the music for us and there weren’t too many dine-in customers on lazy Sunday afternoons.
I also learned that it feels really good being in the seat of a coach, helping kids learn from their mistakes by analyzing their games.
I met many new young players and made new friends at the tournament. A high-schooler in the tournament recently moved to Portland just 2 months ago. And he actually moved into my neighborhood, which is a big coincidence. I was delighted to see a 7th grade player analyze every single one of his games with each of the 3 co-founders of PTC. His idea was to learn from all the three stronger players, which was awesome!
In the future tournaments I will improve on learning and remembering the player’s names. I only remembered around 10 from the 29 players across the two quads. When you remember people’s names and address them by their name it is a sign of respect, and builds good relationships.
There are things that I can learn and improve about analyzing games. I can try to point out more unusual moves, and offer better options along with the concepts that go with them. I will also try and give them lots of ideas to improve their position so they can incorporate them in their games.
I observed my co-founder Zoey is a clear & confident speaker. She puts the players at ease with small talk while analyzing their games. I respect Zoey and will incorporate these behaviors into my own interactions with the players.
Although holding the quads was able to help me learn about myself and the players, there are many things I will improve on in our next quads.
