CCC!
Curiously, I have once again taken up chess. Starting when I was in second or third grade I took part in an after school chess club coached by an enthusiast, Mr. Scott Freneaux. I was better than most of the cruddy players at my school, and in local chess tournaments featuring young'uns like myself I was able to compete effectively... as long as my opponents weren't even the tiniest bit stronger than me. My best ever finish was 3rd, and that came in one of my first tournaments against a weak field. I was never able to get through a tournament without dropping a match.
I went to some pretty big tournaments in Arizona, including the All America Cup (1995 through 1997--I still wear the surprisingly well-fitting shirt from 1996 because I'm awesome), some Arizona-wide megatourney, and the Arizona State Championship. All of these are way, way less impressive than they might sound. Only the State Championship required that I qualify*, and it wasn't an especially elite event. I even managed to convince my dad to fly me all the way out to St. Louis to play in a tournament where I convinced myself I could crush the competition based on the way the different divisions were structured. In case you're thinking that all of my self-deprecation is just a ploy to make me seem like I'm actually super-awesome, the division I wanted to enter into in St. Louis was Class F, for people who were rated under 1000 by the United States Chess Federation. I was rated under 1000. Grandmasters are roughly ~2500, and the guys winning the tournaments I played in were usually about 1200 or 1300. (As of today, according to uschess.org, I, or someone named Jontay Ozkan, is at 929. Much of my tournament history is also available to check out. I just went through it and made several revisions. Nifty. Except for the fact that they have me in the wrong order in the stupid tourney I got 3rd place in because they didn't upload tiebreakers. Taking away my moment of glory. Asshole.)
For the record, in that tournament in St. Louis I got 2.5 points out of 5.0 possible, with a win counting as one point and a draw counting as half. The only highlight was that in the second round I lost to the eventual tournament champion, who somehow entered that section with a rating of 1062. That tournament in St. Louis, at the end of 1998, marked my retirement from chess.
However, during my tournament career and for some time after I maintained an account with the Internet Chess Club, where I took up fun variants like Loser's chess. I'm quite certain that I also got a tiny bit better at the regular stuff. But I stopped playing years ago, largely because the ICC is a subscription server.
In the past week, though, I've registered with the Free Internet Chess Server and started mucking around there. And that's where the flood of memories and this post came from. It's not a part of my life that I reflect on much, especially considering just how much time I spent with it. Perhaps I'll reminisce some more later. Right now I need to play some more chess. And poker.
*I am actually really proud of the way I qualified. The qualifier was a 5 match tournament where you needed 3.0/5.0 points to advance to state. After four rounds I had 2.5 points, and these tourneys match players based on how many points they have, so for the fifth round I was going up against someone else who also had 2.5 points. Naturally, for the purposes of getting into State it was in both of our interests to draw the match. In this spirit, before the game even began my opponent offered me a draw. I thought about it for a second then declined because dammit, I wanted to do this right. I also might have noticed when looking at the pairings for the round that his rating was significantly lower than mine, so I would have thought that my chances would have been pretty decent; but I only know about his rating now because I was poring through my tournament history just a couple of minutes ago, so hey, maybe I didn't know. Regardless of whether I knew, I'm still proud that I didn't take the expedient route.
I went to some pretty big tournaments in Arizona, including the All America Cup (1995 through 1997--I still wear the surprisingly well-fitting shirt from 1996 because I'm awesome), some Arizona-wide megatourney, and the Arizona State Championship. All of these are way, way less impressive than they might sound. Only the State Championship required that I qualify*, and it wasn't an especially elite event. I even managed to convince my dad to fly me all the way out to St. Louis to play in a tournament where I convinced myself I could crush the competition based on the way the different divisions were structured. In case you're thinking that all of my self-deprecation is just a ploy to make me seem like I'm actually super-awesome, the division I wanted to enter into in St. Louis was Class F, for people who were rated under 1000 by the United States Chess Federation. I was rated under 1000. Grandmasters are roughly ~2500, and the guys winning the tournaments I played in were usually about 1200 or 1300. (As of today, according to uschess.org, I, or someone named Jontay Ozkan, is at 929. Much of my tournament history is also available to check out. I just went through it and made several revisions. Nifty. Except for the fact that they have me in the wrong order in the stupid tourney I got 3rd place in because they didn't upload tiebreakers. Taking away my moment of glory. Asshole.)
For the record, in that tournament in St. Louis I got 2.5 points out of 5.0 possible, with a win counting as one point and a draw counting as half. The only highlight was that in the second round I lost to the eventual tournament champion, who somehow entered that section with a rating of 1062. That tournament in St. Louis, at the end of 1998, marked my retirement from chess.
However, during my tournament career and for some time after I maintained an account with the Internet Chess Club, where I took up fun variants like Loser's chess. I'm quite certain that I also got a tiny bit better at the regular stuff. But I stopped playing years ago, largely because the ICC is a subscription server.
In the past week, though, I've registered with the Free Internet Chess Server and started mucking around there. And that's where the flood of memories and this post came from. It's not a part of my life that I reflect on much, especially considering just how much time I spent with it. Perhaps I'll reminisce some more later. Right now I need to play some more chess. And poker.
*I am actually really proud of the way I qualified. The qualifier was a 5 match tournament where you needed 3.0/5.0 points to advance to state. After four rounds I had 2.5 points, and these tourneys match players based on how many points they have, so for the fifth round I was going up against someone else who also had 2.5 points. Naturally, for the purposes of getting into State it was in both of our interests to draw the match. In this spirit, before the game even began my opponent offered me a draw. I thought about it for a second then declined because dammit, I wanted to do this right. I also might have noticed when looking at the pairings for the round that his rating was significantly lower than mine, so I would have thought that my chances would have been pretty decent; but I only know about his rating now because I was poring through my tournament history just a couple of minutes ago, so hey, maybe I didn't know. Regardless of whether I knew, I'm still proud that I didn't take the expedient route.
