Running Man,
Sorry Man! (forgive the pun). I'm trying to remember his name, but it's too long ago. I am not an active Chess Player in terms of tournaments these days.
It was in Medicine Hat High School, Grades 10 -12 (1959 thru 1961 school terms). In 1959 my French teacher, Mr. LePage started the chess club, and a bunch of us joined. We spent our two-hour lunch periods playing chess with him, and for months it was almost obsessive, we loved it so much. It took a few months before we were able to defeat our mentor, but we did it, and he gracefully congratualted us. Then he set us up for Round Robin tournaments in the club, which we played to the end. Then the point came where he thought we were good enough players to take on an outsider, so he invited the Alberta Chess Champion to come to the school one evening, where he would take the entire club on in a Simultaeous Tournament. It was a big event for us all, and none of us could beat him, but we learned a lot.
The chess club disbanded when I was in Grade 11, but we carried on in the cafeteria on our lunch hours, and we did our own competitions. Our long tables were always full of chess sets, and there was hardly room for our lunch buckets. We would read up in a number of chess manuals certain moves and share them with our peers. The longer we played, the harder it was to outsmart the other guy, because we all got used to our patterns of plays and habits of thinking, etc. We even spent many a weekend at friends homes for weekend chess marathons.
Fast forward a few months. My brother, who was in Grade 10 at the time, met a new girl friend. He told me her father loved to play chess. We were not allowed to go out on weekdays, but could on weekends. So one Friday night he took me to her place to introduce me to her father. (I think he used me to get in the good graces of the father, so he could date his daughter. ). The next thing I knew, I spent all my weekends for months going to his place to play chess. (Well, missed the odd one, of course.) Also, he was a pretty spiritually-minded person, as a member of the United Church, and we had a number of biblical discussions, although I was not a JW as yet.
That's about all I can recall from that period of time. Over the years I have played chess, but was not involved with any chess clubs, so would probably need to do a lot of brushing up. I still remember most of the strategies though, which have served me well over the years. We also played "simultaneous chess" where you move the pieces in your head, as well as "blindfold chess" where there are 3 chess boards and 2 sets. The black and white opponents sit with their backs to each other, with one board, and only a black or white set. The other end of the board is blank, with no pieces. The guy in the middle, the Monitor, has a full board. As white makes the first move, the Monitor duplicates the move on his board, and then tells black it's his turn. Black makes a move, and so on. Only the Monitor and the audience gets to see the whole game. White and Black have to imagine what the opponent has done on the last move. There are only two questions you can ask. "Is this move possible?" to which the Monitor can answer either "Yes" or "No". The second question is "Can I take a piece?" The Monitor can reply only with "yes" or "No". If you move and put the other guy in Check, the Monitor says out loud "Black, you are in Check from the diagonal (or the vertical)". If White lands legally on a square occupied by Black (such as moving a pawn on the diagonal and asking if the move is possible) then that piece is removed from Black's board. Oftentimes you would hear your opponent cussing when he loses a piece, and that's how you knew you took one of his pieces. The Monitor never said a word. Anyway, we had a lot of fun with that one.