I have perhaps 15 minutes to compose this blog in order to catch my Sunday evening bus from my office. I’d like to recap what happened on Saturday. Here in San Antonio, we held a free chess tournament at Julia Yates Semmes Library Branch. I didn’t know what to really expect as far as the number of attendees. I was hoping for good numbers but was uncertain what the turnout would be. Why was that important? With a small group I could organize the tournament as a round robin but with larger numbers we could create a swiss tournament where not every player will play each other. Although we had 25 players registered, somewhere around 4 to 5 either didn’t show or left during the tournament.
I’d like to add Felix Fierros was a huge part of making this tournament happen. He secured the site, promoted the event a number of times on Facebook, worked with the Semmes library branch to get the word out throughout the San Antonio Library system, set up the playing area and helped put everything away after the last ribbon for top finishers were presented.
We began a bit after 11am and were done before 5pm. Once we were underway, things went off without much of a hitch. Following the end of one round, we were able to pair up players within only a few minutes.
I hope more people 50 and older play in future tournaments. I’d like to see this tournament become a regular thing locally to bring in more players to play, socialize and grow chess here in our town. If you’d like to play in a future 50 and over tournament, reach out to Felix at [email protected] so we can add you to our database. If you know someone you think might want to play who is 50 or older, pass this post onto them. I’d like to thank each of the participants for making our first senior chess tournament a success.
Winners were:
1st place Doug Huddleston
2nd place Jose DeLeon (Jose I have your ribbon. Direct message me so I can get it to you.)
3rd place Anthony Gordon
