Texas State/ChessKid Online Scholastic Championship!

 

Update (Nov 6, 2020): PLEASE READ HERE.  It includes ESSENTIAL information for tournament participants, such as:

• Time controls
• Fair Play
• Important tips for the day of the event

 

The Texas State/ChessKid Online Scholastic Championship will now feature team prizes, too! The top 3 schools in each of the sections (all 10 of them) will have their top four scorers on each of those teams will win a plaque! In addition, the first place school in each section will win a plaque for display in their school. So, make sure your teammates play too. As is always the case in team events, a minimum team is two players but there is no maximum.

Attention Lone Star ChessKids! It's time for you to become a star yourself. The Texas Chess Association and ChessKid.com are proud to announce the first Texas State/ChessKid Online Scholastic Championship!

The tournament will take place on ChessKid.com from November 14-15, 2020 in ten sections. All students, grades K-12, who attend school in Texas (public, private, charter, homeschool) are eligible to play.

The tournament will be live-streamed for parents to watch on YouTube and Twitch.tv/Chesskid with commentary from FunMasterMike and GM Julio Sadorra!

To register, please click here!(Registration Closed)

Early registration is highly encouraged! It is $35 and ends on Monday, November 2. (Note that for those registering before the early registration deadline, you will not receive your special tournament ChessKid username/password until Thursday, November 5). Registrations received after November 2 will be $50 and those children may not be able to play in the warmup event on November 7. No registration will be allowed after November 10.

Registration before November 2 is highly encouraged so that you are eligible to play in the warmup event on November 7.

Main details & prizes

• All students will play 7 rounds. The time control for all is 15+5 (15 minutes starting time with 5 seconds increment per move). Expected total time for all players will be approximately 4-4.5 hours.
• Sections Playing on Saturday, November 14, starting time at 10am Central/9am Mountain: K-1 Championship; K-1 Under 500; Grades 2-3 Championship; Grades 2-3 U 750; Grades 4-5 Championship; Grades 4-5 Under 950. 
• Sections Playing on Sunday, November 15, starting time at 10am Central/9am Mountain: Grades 6-8 Championship; Grades 6-8 Under 1000; Grades 9-12 Championship; Grades 9-12 U 1250.
• Each section will offer trophies to at least the top 10 finishers, with the possibility of more being added if registration is high. The top finisher in each section will be officially called the "Texas State/ChessKid Online Scholastic Champion" of his/her section.
• In addition, the top three finishers in the K-1, 2-3, and 4-5 Championship sections win one year of free gold memberships to ChessKid.com. The top three finishers in the 6-8 and 9-12 Championship sections win one year of platinum membership to Chess.com.
• All players will received an electronic certificate of participation with the tournament logo.

Special Rules and Common Questions

• This is only an individual event; there are no team prizes. Edit: There are now! See the top of the article.
• "Championship" sections are open to all but "Under" sections are only open to those with established or provisional US Chess ratings below that threshold. The exception to this is the K-1 section, where children who are unrated in real life are eligible for either the "K-1 Championship" or the "K-1 Under 500."
• Ratings for pairings and section purposes are according to US Chess "classical, over the board" ratings. However, the event will be US Chess online rated after it concludes.
• All players must therefore be current members of the US Chess Federation.
• Students are not allowed to play "up" into an older grade division, however a player with a rating below the "Under" threshold can play in the Championship section within his grade band.
• If a player does not have an established US Chess rating (and is therefore "unrated"), then he/she must play in the Championship section, except in the K-1 as noted above.
• The tournament staff will have discretion over determining if a child's multiple ratings qualify him/her for an "Under" section or not (for example, if a child has an established US Chess online rating or FIDE rating but not a US Chess over-the-board rating).
• There will be a warmup event on Saturday, November 7 at 10am Central/9am Mountain in which is highly encouraged for kids to play and practice using the site. This tournament will be 5 rounds of 5+1 and will only take one hour. (There are no prizes -- the intention is to test your computer, internet, and get used to registering and playing in an event.)

Technical details

• All games will be played on ChessKid.com's live server. No account is needed and if you already have an account, you won't need that either. Special one-time use tournament accounts will be created for all players.
• Each section will be open for kids to "join" the tournament about 30 minutes before the first round (9:30am Central/8:30am Mountain both days). Here's a video on how a child joins a live tournament on ChessKid. If you try to register after the starting time, you may not be able to play. It is required that you "join" before the tournament starting time!
• ChessKid highly encourages playing on a laptop/desktop computer and not a tablet. Wifi is usually stronger and the site functions better. If you can plug in to an ethernet port, that is best. The reality of online play, even with the world champion, is that wifi failures can impact an online tournament.
• If you must play on a tablet, the web site version is the only way (opening a browser on your device). The app will not work for this.
• Preferred browsers are Chrome, Safari, or Firefox.
• Clearing your browser's cache before the tournament is another great protective measure.
• If you experience issues in the middle of the game or the tournament, clicking "refresh" on your browser is the first thing to do. If you "refresh" in the middle of a game, it will never kick you out of the game and can only help.
• Two kids cannot play at the same time on the same device (if you have a 4th grader playing on Saturday and an 8th grader playing on Sunday, that would work since they play on different days).
• If a family has any issues with logging in, playing, etc, there will be a live help desk on Slack that will open one hour before each day's first round on November 14 and 15.

Texas GM Julio Sadorra will commentate with FunMasterMike for the event.

Fair Play Rules

• Every game will be subject to review by ChessKid's fair play systems, ChessKid staff, and tournament directors.
• Players are not allowed to use outside assistance of any kind. That includes no computer assistance, no human assistance, no watching the live stream, no tablebases, no databases, no books, no notes, no past games or scorebooks, no use of a second chess set to analyze variations. 
• Players are only allowed to have one tab open on their browser -- the tab in which they are playing. No other web sites are allowed to be open during the event. Players with more than one tab open will be considered to be breaking fair play rules for this event.
• Any fair play violations may result in removal from the tournament, forfeiture of games, and possible further sanctions from the Texas Chess Association or US Chess Federation.
• As per the new US Chess rule, this tournament may take up to three weeks to do fair play review and certify the results. The crosstable that is generated on ChessKid after the event is not official and should not be treated as such.
• Parents are highly encouraged to talk with their children before the event to discuss what is not allowed. Please join the Texas Chess Association and ChessKid in helping kids understand that chess teaches honesty and integrity.

FunMasterMike's Pro-Tips

• When a child is done with a game, the next round will not start until all other games have finished in his/her section. The player is welcome to watch the other games in progress but should never go anywhere else on ChessKid (do not leave the live server). And certainly do not go to any other web site.
• By clicking on "games" in the tournament he/she can also see how many games are remaining in the section and as that number gets closer to "0" then the player should get ready for the next round to start, which will happen automatically a few seconds after the last game finishes.
• A player can get up from the computer to use the restroom or retrieve food/water during the game or after his own game finishes. It is highly unlikely that a player will not have time to do this (you would have to be the final game to finish each and every round -- even still you can make your first move in the next game, then get up to use the restroom).
• Do not touch the board when it is not your turn to move. Very important! There is "pre-move" on ChessKid which very advanced players know about but if that is a term your child doesn't know, then it is not worth trying to use it for this event (with 5 seconds added per move, a child never needs to pre-move).
• If you have a long move, like Ra1-a8, sometimes that is hard to execute for children and they can accidentally drop the piece before getting to a8 (note that all so-called "mouse-slips" stand as played in the tournament). Better is to "click, release, click" method rather than "click, drag, and drop." A child can click on the rook, let go, then click on a8 (the destination square) and there is much less chance of a mouse-slip.
• All three-fold repetitions, 50-move rule claims, etc. are auto-claimed by the server and a child need not "recognize" them as in an over-the-board tournament.
• It is not polite to ask your opponent for a draw every turn by clicking the draw button.
• There is no "auto-queen" on ChessKid. When a pawn reaches the other side of the board for promotion, a child will always get to pick which piece he/she wants.