Happy International Chess Day || My Chess Love Story

"The beauty of chess is it can be whatever you want it to be. It transcends language, age, race, religion, politics, gender, and socioeconomic background. Whatever your circumstances, anyone can enjoy a good fight to the death over the chess board." -Simon Williams

_{Image by UrsaMinorArt From Pixabay}

Hello everyone,

Today is the day we celebrate chess around the world. 20th July is the day the International chess federation was founded, in 1924. I only realized there was a day to celebrate chess last year. The designation of this date is to help promote chess. To be very honest, I sometimes think chess was created because of me because that is the only explanation that comes to my head when I think of what this game gave to me.

My Chess Love Story

I think I've written a bit about this before (I'm not sure). I learned chess in 2009, I was 9 years of age. It was introduced to our academic curriculum. At that time, I was a good reader and a very good student so I would do anything to pass my exams. So if a game was part of the school subjects, who am I not to be interested.

I learned chess as a subject, I didn't play a single game even after a year of learning. I was concerned about theory. How I could pass my chess exams. All I needed was to understand the piece movements and rules, and so I did.

Things became interesting the following year when Pedachess (The body teaching chess in schools) decided to host a chess tournament in my school. It came as a surprise as I didn't even know what a tournament in chess was.

The rule was simple, play and try to be a material up before the "stop" word is called. So if you capture a pawn and your opponent is yet to capture back before the "stop" signal... You win!

It's crazy right... I finished second in the junior category and won a silver medal. The first position got a trophy and a chess board. I felt so happy but dissatisfied that I didn't come first... That was how my love for chess began! From that day onwards, I wanted to win!

My first Tournament Win

The same tournament was organized the following year.. 11 year old me won comfortably as I already understood d rules. I captured my opponent's pieces quickly even if they were bad moves. It didn't matter at the end as the stop signal signifies the end of the game.

I never knew that was the beginning!

I ended up staying in that school. I became the school chess champion and also represented the school at the state level.

In 2015, I captained my high school in winning the state chess championships. I won 3 Gold medals (Team Gold, Individual Gold & Blitz Gold). It was the first time my school was participating so winning was a big surprise, A bigger surprise was the fact that I didn't lose a game and I ended up beating previous winners and chess champions.

My story became so popular as I was featured in newspapers and also on one of the biggest tv stations in Nigeria. My interview had a lot of people calling me a potential first GM!

Teenage Chess champion

If you click the link above to watch the interview... It starts at 5:00

Chess helped me gain admission to the university... I had two federal university offers and a half scholarship offer to school abroad. I didn't have money to school abroad so I ended up at the University of PortHarcourt where I studied Biochemistry for 4 years.

I discovered that there were chess tournaments where I could win money in Nigeria so I started playing. My father hated chess, he compared the chess pieces to Idols. It was my mom who supported my passion and helped me to financially attend tournaments.

Her efforts paid off the following year (2016) when I won the National u-16 chess championship and qualified to play for Nigeria in Lusaka, Zambia that same year!

I won a lot of medals at the junior level. But as they say. "Time waits for no man" I ended up stucked in the university and couldn't play much. I started declining in strength as I was distracted with fending for myself.

It didn't stop me from winning with my university. I participated in the Nigerian university games(2017) and West Africa university games (2018) winning One Gold and Two bronze medals.

I tried to find a sponsor but just like every chess player my age, I failed. I gave up on my chess career the following year after coming 3rd place in an u-20 competition. I still played chess but I had no reason to believe I could be Nigeria's first Grandmaster.

I played for fun, I had online accounts everywhere. I join them in 2018 and I played there too. Now that I think of it, It's incredible how @schamangerbert and @stayoutofherz have organized and played chess on this chain for that long!

Anyway, I see the latter online every day so I shouldn't be surprised!

I Started Teaching Chess!

I discovered chess was the only thing I was good at. I abandoned every other thing for the game. It was High time I shared my knowledge and earn. I started teaching a school. I have been teaching chess for 4 years now and I enjoy it so much.

I have a theory- Adults learn how to move the chess pieces very fast, but fail to understand the game fast while kids struggle to understand pieces' movement, but once they do, they get a deeper understanding faster than adults.

Moms & Dads On Hive, Here Are 5 Reasons Why Your Child Should Play Chess !

I made this post on my return to hive and I just wanted to highlight it again today.

I had users like @cmplxty, and @victoriabsb saying they would teach their kids when they grow older. I hope they do and yes, this is a reminder :)

In Conclusion...

I would spend today on Lichess playing lightning chess! Catch me and challenge me, my username is "Zgm_samostically"

I got the Zgm local title from our small crazyhouse/Bughouse chess community in Nigeria.

I would also use this opportunity to thank everyone that supports my chess content. I have indeed become a chess content creator thanks to Hive!

Can you play chess? How did you learn how to play? Could you tell us your story?

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Thanks For Reading!