Arizona Grammy: Collin and the STATE Chess Tournament

Collin is a chess geek! Yep, he's in Chess Club! At the ripe old age of 6 and in kindergarden!

And then the club went to state tournaments. Lucky for all of us, it was here this year!

So, of course, we had to go watch him.

This was a planning meeting - him and daddy. They thought that maybe the kid he played in the round before maybe made two moves at once so Terry is helping him figure out how to score his card so he could make sure it was all equal.

I think Collin was more excited about getting his own can of Dr Pepper!

This was a SERIOUS thing, folks. There were 563 participants! K-12

There were chess tables set up ALL OVER the hotel - all the conference rooms!

These were just for K-1. I can't remember for sure but I think there were like 8 ?? rows of tables - all for the little kids! It was ridiculous! And there were like 10 boards set up in each row? Crazy!

Here's Collin, all ready with his score card and his board....where's his opponet? NOOOO where to be seen. See the glass of water? She brought that to the table, sat for a minute, put her head on the table like she didn't feel good then got up and went to her mom. Turns out, she didn't want to play any more! But Collin had to sit there, watching all the other kids playing while he waited for someone to determine if it was a forfeit or if she was going to come back and play. She didn't so we didn't get to see him play! Darn it!

I can't remember what the final results were - he had 4 matches on Saturday and 3 on Sunday. But his team did well - they each got a participation trophy and Collin got a ribbon! He was really excited.

We are really proud of him.

(I wasn't there for the awards ceremony but this is a shot Terry took with his phone. I should have left the camera with him! The shot is really blurry but Collin is down in front! Looking so proud!