How I Got Started In Chess: BrewMaster

I started learning chess when I was five years old in kindergarten when my sister, Noni, joined the chess club at school. My sister and I went to the same school. Chess club was on Wednesday after school which finished at 3:30pm while I finished school at 12:30pm on Wednesday. Since I was in kindergarten I could not join any club yet. But my parents wanted to pick us up from school at the same time. So my parent asked Mr. Chris Johnson, the chess coach, to keep me in the chess room after school. 

A young Brewington and Coach Chris Johnson analyzing in between rounds. 

Although I was in the chess club's classroom, I did not actually get to study and play chess with the other students. I was just drawing pictures in the corner.  But I was also listening and became very interested in chess. Eventually I was allowed to join the club for their lessons and practice games.

I felt kind of intimidated because I was the only person in kindergarten in the club. I wanted to get better when I realized this was what I wanted to do. In the club, Mr.Johnson told us to solve 20 puzzles on ChessKid.com every week. But I did around 100 a week. Also I watched all of available ChessKid videos. l even skipped dinner to study and play on ChessKid and my mom cut off the computer since she did not want me to starve. The coach was surprised about how much I loved the game!

My First Nationals

A couple of month after I started to play chess, my mom decided to take me to nationals in Nashville, Tennessee along with my sister because I was so crazy about chess. That was my third tournament I ever played. I was 262nd at the start and ended in 194th with 3.0 points in the K-1 Championship section. My rating went down from 406 to 388. 

 

This is me! We can call him: "Little BrewMaster"!

I’ll never forget that you can learn something no matter what the result is. One of the games I played, I promoted five queens. The tournament director (TD) was kind enough to bring me four queens since I started with only one queen. I was excited to promote all those pawns into queens! But I stalemated the opponent. Then I realized I had to learn what stalemate was and how to mate with queen and king because I was not at the level to know it yet. And I mastered both.

I do not know where I would be without Mr.Johnson and ChessKid. They have taught me most of my basic chess knowledge.

More about my beginnings in chess in my next article!