Windward Chess Club – My Personal Blog

Introduction to my blog and I

My name is Kal, I am a 24-year-old Kiwi living just south of Karamea, my passion for chess has led me to write this blog, which to some degree was partially motivated through sheer boredom.

Karamea, isn’t a heavily populated area, there are 373 people living here and I know every one of them. My neighbours are Mr. Benjamin Douglas who lives to the left-side of me and William Winward on the right.

I play chess and it began when I was 5, maybe 6.

Long-story-short, one day Mr. Douglas and Mr. Windward were playing a game of chess, out on Mr. Windward’s porch. My mother asked if they could babysit me for 2 minutes whilst she rushed off to the hospital – she was a nurse and what should have been 120 seconds turned out to be, in fact, approximately closer to 17,226.

There I was, a 5-year-old boy with two old men in their 50s and so my passion for the game of chess begun.

In 2017, Mr. Windward passed away and, thus, the creation of the Windward Chess Club formed with Mr. Douglas and I, at the helm.

Table Games

When I was a kid, I knew of some table games, draughts, backgammon, and dominos, the latter regularly play with my uncle. I loved bar skittles as a child. Now older, I see there is a huge array of table games that can be played. Classics like the Pucket, Pick-Up Sticks, Jenga, and Shoot the Moon.

Then you have the more modern games that stray into the realms of board gaming, such as monopoly and scrabble.

I never developed a full infinity with board games or table games like I did with chess.

Why Chess?

Chess is a game that required thought and patience this became quite apparent even at a young age. I took pleasure from watching and learning how the game had seemingly limitless ways of being played. From the start losing was very much a commonality, as a child, losing isn’t exactly fun but because it was so frequent when playing against older people, the willingness to learn and win was something that became more of an obsession.

As I grew older, I became more aware, I started to win game, stalemates would become more frequent as my wits tackled those of my peers. For me, the passion for chess was nostalgic, being sat with Mr. Douglas and Mr. Windward and sharing stories whilst we played.

Outside of the Windward Chess Club I would explore other areas of the game, mainly through the services of the Internet.

Slow Chess League

By the time I was 15, I joined a virtual online Slot Chess League. These were tournaments held between players across the world. The platform allowed for players to compete on a global scale, I would be playing against those in Korea, Canada and players in Europe.

The League was quite popular, I’d play about 5 games a week, you would come across the same player may be twice a month, so the numbers were fairly high.

Hawaii Chess

Through the Slow Chess League, I was able to become acquainted with other players. From this I join the Hawaii Chess Federation. This help tournaments, offered access to other clubs and enabled me to compete with players that were considerably better than me, holding state and country titles from the United States.

ChessExpress

My progression of learning never ceased, and I soon discovered the ChessExpress tool. This was a major introduction of cutting-edge technology into the game and more importantly, how to learn the game. The tool was able to record your games, provide instant analysis of the moves you make, you could set time-control limits to speed your play up. You could use this tool with any chess board and play with other as learn from them watching games and tournaments.

The Blog

Now, I have never written a blog before, I’m not entirely sure of the rules but I shall continue regardless to share with you my love of the game, discuss online tips, recommendations, mobile chess play, tournaments and keep you up to date with what Mr. Douglas and I do in the continued memory of Mr Windward.

I hope you enjoy what I am sharing and if you wish to get in touch, please feel free to do so.