We’ve got the fever for chess and are looking forward to our Chess Festival!

Falk Weiß

All next week our school community will be thinking black and white as we celebrate a Chess Festival!

Chess has deep cultural significance and is considered one of the most complex board games in the world. By activating both hemispheres of the brain, playing the game trains the brain’s capacity and greatly enhances logical-strategic and creative thinking.

For several weeks now, Ms Barry, who is leading the chess club, which has been taking place once a week since the beginning of the school year, has also set up several chess sets on the balcony in front of the refectory during the breaks and openly offers all students the opportunity to play chess there. The interest of our students was enormous and especially girls and boys from the 7th and 8th classes were always there and enjoyed playing against each other or against Ms. Barry several times a week.

Because of the great response and because we just think the royal game is cool, a Chess Festival was announced for the next week. We have ordered a huge garden chess and the children can play in the school yard. There are tournaments every day in the different Years during break time and we also organise games between Platanus team and students. Every day there is a notice next to the NaWi room with a chess puzzle to think about and ponder which move would be the best. Other planned activities are speed chess in the Mensa and partner chess, where 2 players play together against two other players and take turns with their moves, but without being allowed to communicate.

On Friday, the grand final will take place, for which we have bought a chess demonstration board. Then the best player from Years 1 to 6 and from Years 7 to 10 will play against each other. The best player in the school receives the winner’s trophy.

After the huge success of the TV series “The Queen’s Gambit”, Ms. Barry has now also infected our students with chess fever and motivated the girls in particular to join in.

We are excited and looking forward to the coming week, when we are going to hear “checkmate” every day!

Many thanks in advance to Ms. Barry for the organisation and, as always, to our parents’ association “Platanus & Friends” for the financial support.