By Jacob Ying
“Checkmate!” said Lovett chess tournament winner Wolfe Hudephol as he beat his opponent Marcus Shih to remain undefeated. This was the culmination of a fun and mentally challenging two weeks of Lovett’s chess tournament. Wolfe took home a trophy and an array of prizes.
Lovett’s 2024 chess tournament was a great success this year! Every day during lunch in the two weeks leading up to Thanksgiving break, students and some teachers sat over their boards, trying to outmaneuver each other.
In advance of the tournament, Mr. Bowden made an announcement in Morning Meeting to encourage participation, and scores of people signed up to play a series of chess matches.
Mr. Bowden told me that chess is the most popular library game. “There was originally one board and there was so much demand we ended up getting six,” he said. So hosting a tournament made a lot of sense. He also wanted to remind students that the library is more than a place to study. “One of the goals is for the library to be a place where students can relax and have some fun,” he said.
Matches followed the standard rules of chess, the ancient game played on an 8×8 box board. For those who do not know, you move various types of pieces in different ways, and the game’s objective is to checkmate an opponent’s king. How do you checkmate? Well, you trap their king in a position where they are in check, where they are threatened to be captured, and ensure that they are checked from all directions.
To keep things moving along, Mr. Bowden imposed a delay of game penalty, where they forfeited their queen, for players who spent a bit too much time trying to plan out their moves and anticipate countermoves. After all players only had 30 or so minutes during lunch to play.
The tournament proved extremely entertaining, drawing modest but passionate daily crowds. I was there most days having a blast. Players included a diverse group of teachers and students from all Upper School divisions and grade levels.
In some games, the skill gradients were quite apparent: a match between John Wood and Talen Frett resulted in John mating Talen in just 4 moves! Other matches dragged on for what seemed like eons. One game, between Marcus Shih and Zeheb Merchant, lasted nearly 40 minutes!
Many players obviously enjoyed chess, and even after losing or finishing their matches of the day, would play friendly exhibition matches.
Wolfe was a clear favorite from the moment I first watched him play. His opponent John Wood, a good player himself, stood no chance against Wolfe. While I watched him play, Wolfe talked to me and other spectators about his history with the game.
“Yeah, before COVID I used to play a lot of chess, I think I had 2300 ELO back then,” he said. (That rating puts him at the level of “candidate master.”) However, he lost interest during the pandemic. “I liked the tournaments,” he said. During COVID, in-person tournaments stopped and he focused on playing tennis.
The chess tournament clearly came just in time for him to dust off his pieces and get back in the game.
All of this is good news for Mr. Bowden, who thinks the tournament went very well. “I got a lot of positive feedback from most of the participants and some people who didn’t sign up,” he said.
Will it happen again next year, I wondered. “That’s the plan!” he said.
