Chess Tournament

We had an individual in Holbrook this last weekend. Now anytime that I host a tournament, I try to put on a good show...but this one didn't work out as well. I was behind from the get go. I came home and had two things on my mind...get ready for the tournament and do some dishes. As soon as I pulled in I was Bogarted away on another errand from the neighbors...which I don't mind in the least. So, I told her five minutes, got all of my stuff together, and had her hold the soup on the way to drop of her uniform. Of course we hit every bumpy street in Holbrook and she ended up wearing the soup. "It looks like I threw up...Ewwww!" I believe that was the correct phraseology...hilarious.

So we ran the uniform down to the field, dropped neighbor back off, got the rest of the stuff, headed into Safeway and bought the last thing I needed...ice...and headed over to the tournament where the tables were in a different arrangement than I am used to. I started to set up and continued getting texts that kept dropping everyone from the tournament play...so I had to change all of my line-ups like three times.

So the tournament finally starts and we had 8 upsets in the first two rounds. That never happens. In fact, the number one player in the region lost 3 of 5 games. It was insane.

Then one of my players had a chance to take fourth, and ended up losing because he didn't remember to put his notation away in the last five minutes of the game. I was furious!

So...it was pretty bad...and I didn't even mention the fire alarms going off and going to each building to turn them off before the players arrived on Saturday morning, the football game going on at the same time and the fireworks blasting through the rounds on Friday night, or the fact that there are two kids who just don't know when to shut up...every single tournament.

What can you do?