Ah...chess. I don't think I'll be playing chess in a while haha. But this experience has taught me to think while playing chess. I used to just...yar. Try to eat as many pieces as possible and corner the opponent's king only when he's lost all his other pieces. If I played with anyone who knows enough, I'd just lose terribly haha.

So yar. Didn't really prepare much for this. I think I only started to 'seriously' prepare for this 3 days ago when I met sharon in school, early in the morning, to play chess. And to practice notating. That is, writing the moves out. That was terrible. Played once in the range with Rachel and tried notating. That time wasn't too bad cos she wrote the letters and numbers out. But sharon forced me to do it without the letters. Ah well. And I kept forgetting to press the clock. See...in this chess thing, each player is only given 25 minutes. The person who gets checkmated or runs out of time loses. So there's this clock which we have to press after every move. Yar. Focused too much on notating and kept forgetting to press the clock. Lesson 1. Press the clock. Ha. Important lesson. Ok.

Next day, met rachel to play in the morning. Then met sharon again to play after school. Played for almost the whole afternoon. She kept making me take back my mistakes cos she said it wasn't fun to play with me a piece down. Haha. Ah well. Ok, got a little better at notating and pressing the clock.

Competition time. Went early. Lets just get to the games shall we? I started out as black. 1st game against VJ was supposed to be easy. She didn't look very confident and didn't even
remember to press her clock a lot of times. I just waited for her time to run while I looked at the pieces and pretended nothing was wrong until she realised. This happened more than once. Then I got over confident. Stupid. I didn't see the bishops on the right side. And I thought her queen wasn't a huge threat. Then whoops. Huge whoops. She checkmated me without even knowing it was a checkmate herself!! What the... Yar. Was quite crushed haha.

After first game, went to sofas and thought about stuff. Felt quite bad cos I should have been able to win that game. Ah well. My mind drifted. Make sense of the following.

jack of all trades but master of none.
good at getting opportunities but not good at making the best out of them. always seem to blunder. blah. squash, got in yes but 4 years in squash with one nationals and a bronze (4 schools participated). with tll, got in yes but didn't do well in it. made bad impression and it made a bad impression on me too. shooting got in yes, but didn't get to shoot in the end. now chess, got in yes, but messed up as well. argh. ok I didn't expect chess anyway so... fine.

Yar that's that. 2nd game was against Nanyang. My opponent was supposed to be quite strong, but
she had a time problem. But guess what? Halfway through the game, her clock stopped. All the while, I was wondering how I could have less time than her when she clearly took longer than me to think. And the tragic thing was, I could have won cos she only had a couple of minutes left. Like 2. So if not for the ----- clock, I might have won. Gah.

Third game was just bad. Against RJ team 1. The girl basically killed every move I made and finished me in 10 - 15 minutes... literally ate me up haha.

Fourth game was against a girl I sat next to on the third game. From RJ team 2. She's quite a nice person. Friendly. Well...I ate her queen early in the game, then I was chasing her around until I blundered and she ate my queen. Then it was her turn to chase me around. Played until I was down to 2 rooks against her 1 rook, 1 knight and a bishop. Wanted to make her run out of time but she was quite fast with her moves. Not as slow as I wanted lah. But I very nearly did. She, however, managed to well.. eat up all my pieces.

At the end, she had 1 queen and a king and a pawn. I had one king. Then she queened her pawn. And ah...chased my king around. However, lalala...shooting taught me to continue playing even when it looks hopeless. Don't ask me how. But somehow. So I ran around the middle of the board and she chased. Chased and chased and chased. Was praying throughout the last 10 minutes hahaha. Then miracle!!! My king couldn't move anymore and well, it wasn't being checked! She stalemated me!! With 2 queens. Muahahahahahaha. I was
overjoyed! And she was kicking herself haha.

So there. 4 rounds. 3 loses and 1 stalemate. 1/2 a point. Whoohoo.

In the end, the team didn't do too badly. I didn't contribute, obviously. So got a bronze haha. Right.

Oh yar, and during our lunch break, we went to comics connections. And I found a pack of Bleach playing cards! Bought them and also got a zangetsu keychain. The sword, not the man. Hahaha. Yay.