Steer Shows vs Chess Tournaments

About two years ago a relatively well known south Texas preacher that I went to high school with told me he taught his kid that is the same age as Luke to play chess.  Insulted that any kid could possibly come close to the intelligence of our precious little snow flake I immediately taught Luke to play.

Like a surprisingly high percentage of five year olds, he took to it extremely quickly.  He’s not great but he knows more strategy than I do and was chomping at the bit when I told him there are tournaments.  There was one here in San Antonio this past weekend that had a K-1st grade section so we spent Saturday sitting around a chess tournament (don’t tell me how the A&M v Mississippi State game went, I still haven’t watched and can’t wait for the excitement of a great game).

I had never been to a chess tournament before so I didn't really know what to expect.  Admittedly, there is a LOT less beer at those things and for some reason it’s not a requirement that every girl have their britches blinged out.  But there are an awful lot of similarities between steer shows and chess tournaments…

There’s a rush when the waiting room opens to get to the spots closest to the outlets and then a lot of sitting around waiting.  In fact, take the beer out of the equation and the staging areas for parents are just about the same.

There are those families that you know you won’t be able to compete with, typically any of them with an Asian last name.

Luke has too much of his daddy in him and would rather chit chat than do anything productive.  Several times I looked into the game room and saw him and his opponent just laughing and waving their arms around rather than actually playing chess.

The barn chatter isn’t that “so-and-so spent $xxx,xxx on his steers and has fitters out there working them every day”, the chatter is “the Lin family makes their kids practice 6-8 hours a day”. 

Just like steer shows, I’m in no way prepared for my family to make the sacrifices a person has to make in order to end up at the top of the heap.

There are odd smells that float by every now and then.  Instead of manure from oddly fed cattle it tends to be more of the curry influenced BO variety.

Unfortunately, there are also crying holes and people who know how to game the system.

Going into Luke’s fifth match it was almost a certainty that he was going to get a trophy for 10th place (there were 27 in his k-1st grade section).  The only thing that could prevent him from it would be if another match ended up in a draw.

Unfortunately it turns out that somebody taught their six year old how to get a draw out of a game and the girl that went 1-0-4 edged Luke’s 3-2-0 out for 10th.  Luke cried his eyes out for a while but was already asking about more tournaments he can go to.  Nothing compares to that beaming smile with no front teeth after he won his first competitive match though.

The bad part?

I realized I don’t really like playing chess.

Maybe I can hire a fitter for that part.